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Subject: NBC Is Not for Sale - Not Just Yet, Anyway; GE Chairman Shoots Down Months-Old
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 04:45:04 EST
Message-ID: <17.1992Nov25.044505@AmeriCast.com>
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NBC Is Not for Sale - Not Just Yet, Anyway; GE Chairman Shoots
Down Months-Old Rumors Involving Network<By Mark Potts=Washington
Post Staff Writer=

 For months, one of the hottest rumors in media and Wall Street
circles has been that General Electric Co. is on the verge of
selling the NBC television network.

 The price tag is $2 billion to $3 billion, as the rumors have
it.  And Walt Disney Co., Paramount Communications Inc., finan-
cier Marvin Davis, entertainment moguls David Geffen and Barry
Diller, even TV star Bill Cosby have been mentioned as potential
buyers - with the speculation further fueled by GE's standard
policy of not commenting on rumors, even to deny them.

 Now there is comment from the very top of GE. And the message
is: No sale - at least not yet.

 "I don't want to say what we're going to do with NBC, because we
don't know what we're going to do about NBC," GE Chairman John F.
Welch Jr. said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and
editors this week.

 What's more, Welch said, he has no particular time frame for
making a decision on NBC - if he intends to make one at all. "I
have a lot of these issues, and NBC just happens to be more jaz-
zy," he said.

 NBC is seen by many analysts as a possible sale candidate be-
cause its ratings have stumbled in the past couple of years. The
network has fallen to third place from the top spot it held con-
sistently after Fairfield, Conn.-based GE acquired it as part of
a takeover of RCA Corp. in 1987.

Another factor propelling the rumor mill is that Welch has said
repeatedly and forcefully that he does not want GE to be involved
in any business that is not number one or number two in its in-
dustry. That policy was an underlying factor in GE's decision
this week to sell its aerospace division to Bethesda-based Martin
Marietta Corp. for $3.05 billion.

 Welch indicated in the interview that he believes NBC can become
first again in the ratings. But he added: "Everything that we
couldn't get to be No. 1, we've done something about."

02:13 11-25C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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