What? Who? A cable company in Philadelphia trying to take over the Walt Disney Co.?Comcast Corp. going after Disneyland, ABC television, Snow White, Nemo, and other stars from the nation’s number-one movie studio? Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts taking on, and maybe bringing down, Michael Eisner, the Disney boss who started the whole CEO-as-celebrity thing?
Casual observers were shocked by Roberts’ play for Disney on Wednesday, stunned by its brashness and – given Disney’s internal troubles and its shareholder meeting in Philadelphia in two weeks by its exquisitely brutal timing. The $66 billion deal could make Comcast the world’s biggest media company.
Comcast? Brian Roberts as king of all media? Who are these guys?
“I swear to God, if these people were to move 93 miles north, people would be begging for them,” said Jim Cramer, a former hedge-fund manager who is a Philadelphia native and CNBC television host. “Because they’re from Philadelphia and not from New York and Goldman Sachs, they have no respect. What do they have to do to get people to take them seriously?”
Roberts is the anti-glamour media boss. He’s been in the ring with Bill Gates, John Malone, Ted Turner, all of them, but few people would recognize him outside the pages of a business magazine. His company owns two sports teams – the Flyers and 76ers – but his name never shows up in the sports section.
He prefers to mind his own business, and does that very well. He’s an intense competitor – a college All-American squash player – who will work every angle to defeat an opponent, then try to leave things on a good note. Terry McGuirk, vice chairman of Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting and an occasional golf partner, said the scary thing is, “I think Brian is playing less and getting better.”
He’s also a family guy who begged to work for his father, Comcast founder Ralph J. Roberts, after graduating from Wharton in 1981. He spent years working his way up the company ladder to dispel perceptions of nepotism.
And never mind his own glamour, or lack thereof – he acts as if he’s not even attracted to it. His spin on the idea of buying Disney, though surely meant to dispel the idea that he puts any premium on the Disney aura, isn’t about how cool it would be to control the Magic Kingdom.
“This is the next logical step for the company,” he said Friday – and that’s pretty much all he says about it.