General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt threw out a bomb at a private company employee meeting of NBC Universal saying that the analog TV business will no longer be able to sustain past growth.
Referring to any TV studio in general, Immelt said:
"But the fact here is whether you pick Fox or ABC, that the business that's No. 1 will make 40% less than we made when we were No. 1, so 
now when we look up and say, 'Hey we will be No. 1 again someday,' we don't get back to where we started from ... we get back to a number that is 40% lower than where we started from."
The meeting was also attended by NBC Universal chairman and CEO Bob Wright along with NBC Universal Television Group president Jeff Zucker. According to Hollywood Reporter, neither of them spoke.
With Immelt, who knows his stuff, telling his people that the No. 1 analog TV network will be 40% less than prior networks in No. 1 positions, is an extraordinary admission to the state of Hollywood.
This seems to me to be an encouragement session for the media arm of the company, but possibly also a message sent to its top executives. Following their numerous comments and veiled threats throughout the last year, it has given a lot of people a bad taste in their mouth about NBC Universal.
They, probably more than anybody else, have fought the inevitable changes that the digital world has forced upon them. They've been PR disasters for the company.
It's refreshing to see someone that's very respected in the media business give an honest business assessment on the diminishing analog world.
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