One of the most recognized boy icon in logos and all of media and entertainment is the Peacock, NBC’s logo. NBC of course is one of the three major networks in the United States and is itself part of NBC Universal.
NBS Universal is the result of a merger between General Electric and Vivendi Universal. GE owns 80%, Vivendi owns 20%.
Welcome to watchmojo.com, I’m your host Stash Can Perves and today, we take a look at the history of NBC Universal. Universal Pictures origins actually dated back to a German Jewish immigrant named Carl Langley who established the Colden Store in Wisconsin. During an early trip to Chicago, he came across Nickelodeon theaters and absolutely fell in love. From then onwards, he basically repositioned his company into a movie business and by 1925 the Universal Pictures Company was born.
By the 1950’s, the movie business was in serious trouble. That's when MCA, a record label proceeded to combine its operations with those of Universal and by 1962, proceeded to take over Universal Pictures.
In the decade that ensued, MCA ran into its own share of problems and that’s when long time head Lou Walsterman decided to reach out to Matsushita Electronic to get some help. A short five years after Matsushita entered the scene, they themselves proceeded to go out and sell MCA Universal to liquor distributors Cigre.
At the onset of the 21st century, Cigre then decided to accelerate its strategy to scale in the media business and merge with Vivendi.
The merged company was baptized Vivendi Universal but by 2004, it's was burdened with debt and Vivendi sought to sell an 80% stake to General Electric who owned of course NBC.
NBC then proceeded to merge NBC and Universal and dropped the Vivendi name and today owns 80% of the entity, and hence why Vivendi owns the remaining 20%. NBC Universal’s main bread and butter has always been TV productions. But today, the company’s “luster of hits’ includes some of the biggest successes ever including ET, Jaws, and of course Back to The Future.
Despite it's tremendous past or maybe because of it NBC Universal remains one of the most successful and best position media companies entering the 21st century. In fact, the company owns the rights to the Olympics and this year will be front and center as the Olympics’ charge into China for the Beijing Games.
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