Comcast: Tupelo Muzak, a Failed Disney Bid and the 2026 NBCUniversal Split

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In 1963 Ralph Roberts, Daniel Aaron and Julian Brodsky paid $500,000 for American Cable Systems in Tupelo, Mississippi, a five-channel system with about 12,000 customers, and soon added a Muzak franchise built on the same wire-and-subscription model. The company became Comcast in 1969 and went public in 1972. Under Ralph's son Brian Roberts it bought regional systems one at a time, including Lenfest Communications in 1999, which locked up the Philadelphia market. In 2001 it bought AT&T Broadband for $44.5 billion, adding 22 million subscribers and becoming the largest U.S. cable company, and after the @Home Network went bankrupt that year it became its own internet provider.

Worried about becoming a dumb pipe, Comcast made a hostile $54 billion bid for Disney in 2004 and failed. It then took control of NBCUniversal from General Electric between 2009 and 2013, bought DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion in 2016, and won Sky in 2018 for £22.1 billion. Regulators balked at its Time Warner Cable deal, which it abandoned in 2015. Customer anger ran high: the Consumerist blog named it Worst Company in America in 2010 and 2014, with a Golden Poo trophy, even as revenue rose. After the pandemic hit its theme parks and Peacock fought costly streaming wars, Comcast announced in June 2026 that it would spin off NBCUniversal and Sky as a separate public company.

• Comcast and Time Warner split Adelphia's assets in 2006.
• The FCC fined Comcast $2.3 million for charging customers for equipment they never ordered, and Washington's attorney general sued in 2016 over billing practices.
• A 2014 investigation by The Verge described a sales-driven support culture, and leaks showed management telling staff unions were not in their interest.
• Brian Roberts holds 33 percent of the voting power while owning about 1 percent of the equity.
• Comcast sold its 33 percent stake in Hulu back to Disney for $27.5 billion.