NBC went and pulled most of the videos from the Internet. The video we embedded is dead. But of course they couldn’t get them all. Simply searching Google for Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel pulls dozens of copies. Nothing ever goes away online. NBC should know this by now. It’s called the Internet.

Seriously, NBC. No one was laughing at your then-star hosts. We were all laughing with them. It’s not like they were asking questions about the Internet now. This was 1994. No one outside of universities and X-Files watchers had any clue about the Internet. The video simply served as a nice reminder that the Internet grew in importance so rapidly that even some of the world’s most versed newscasters were simply clueless in the early days.

So in case you missed it the first time around, I embedded two different versions of the video below. You know, just in case NBC’s still on a witch hunt and pulls one of them. I reached out to NBC but have yet to hear anything. That darn @ symbol is so tricky sometimes.

http://www.metatube.com/flash/player.swf

The title of this post is both a very old idea and a very new one. With the prevalence of fiber connectivity and pervasive broadband speeds, this year has been a hot one for bringing together the home computer and the living room TV. While companies like Apple and Google battle over share of TV viewers, they have left open and promoted the web for content distributors to control their own experience through HTML (and, especially, HTML5).

To that end, it looks like Apple has one-upped Google by opting to privately pre-arrange distribution deals with traditional studio networks beginning with ABC and FOX, while Google has no deals in place at all, hoping the networks will just “allow” consumers to watch Web videos on their TVs. But Google TV is getting a slap in the face from several networks who pulled the plug, right on the big release day. Just as reviews were rolling out in favor of Google’s new living room effort, ABC, CBS and NBC are exiting stage left.

The interesting thing here is that the networks are not sending Google cease and desist letters, they are just simply blocking this particular device from accessing their otherwise free websites, using a free and open protocol. If you normally like to visit http://abc.com on your computer to watch video content, no problem, but if you want to access the website on your Google TV browser by going to abc.com, currently, you will be blocked.

These tactics by the networks are part of a clear strategy that has been at play for some time, Google could have anticipated this would happen. Remember the Hulu vs. Boxee battle? Boxee pumped Hulu through to the TV, but Hulu blocked Boxee because Hulu is restricting their content to computer screens. So Boxee worked around it to get Hulu to the TV screen. Then Hulu blocked the workaround, so on and so forth. Boxee was confident that they were within the boundaries of the law because they were picking up on signals that Hulu was sending out with a free and open protocol, via the world wide web.

Now the same networks behind Hulu are sending the same message to Google in exactly the same way. They are saying you can watch their content with a browser on your computer, or phone, but when it comes to the Google TV set in particular, just like the Boxee, or any other living room TV set, it’s a no go. They are discriminating by device.

Here is what is going on. If you have a TV now, you are almost certainly paying for TV content with a monthly cable bill and if you start to get your TV content through the web, it will be just a matter of time before you will cut your cable bill. The cable companies know this and they appear to be doing everything they can to force the networks to comply with their demands to block their streaming Web video from appearing on TVs. The networks have their hands tied because almost all of their revenue comes from cable right now and if they break up with cable, and go hard-core internet on their own, they will likely implode overnight. For, as you know, Google TV is not offering them anything, and Apple isn’t offering a good enough deal to exist on. So there you have the problems of the traditional TV networks, once rivals now conspiring to sustain their long held control of a medium that is slipping away.

As for the rest of the world, you can’t stop us. Developers of Web video distribution platforms forge ahead. Apple is offering to lure them in with partnerships, Google is giving them the opportunity to figure it out for free. Neither Apple nor Google, nor anyone else is waiting any longer. The time is now. You can feel it. The rest of the video world marches on, bringing the internet and the TV closer together.

Moving Ahead

For most people, Google TV vs. Apple TV is about something different. They are fighting a war for capturing people at the hardware and operating system levels. Apple is succeeding in selling hardware by locking people in with an integrated operating system, while Google is capturing people on the operating system level, with Android, and then integrating Google services from there. Google is giving Android away for free so they can tag along for the ride.

From Google on the Google TV, October, 2010 :

We are working hard to open source the code for the GoogleTV project, and hope to release the source code next year.

From Apple on the Apple TV, October, 2010:

If you can’t add or play a movie in iTunes or QuickTime Player, then you won’t be able to convert it to play on Apple TV.

When Steve Jobs says, “Open doesn’t always win,” he’s talking directly to Google about this war. But for those in the TV business who wish to distribute their content to both Apple TV and Google TV audiences, it doesn’t really matter.

In the past, with this same closed strategy, Apple may have captured the content of the music industry business but I suspect Apple doesn’t really care about the TV content business too much. The studios are traditionally full of wacky businesses and the pool of valuable TV content is a relatively small one with a profit margin that is expected to shrink. How many hit series are there at any one time anyway? Not that many. And of all the series in the past how many are still in high demand?

No Need For Apps

The world is obsessed with apps right now. An app is just software for your computer, and developers are being forced to recreate the same experience dozens of different ways. It’s a constant re-inventing of the wheel. What a waste of time. Now Microsoft is getting into the game too. While it’s easy for a consumer to ignore by just sticking to their platform of choice, developers and content distributors need to figure out WTF they must do next to make their “app” look the same on Windows or some other new platform, like yep, Apple Lion.

Yes, the diversity in platforms is also needed and welcome. It’s in the best interest of the world overall to have many choices. There are many examples of wants-and-needs not being met by just one development platform. Special tasks require alternate solutions. But for TV content, distributed to the living room, none of this really matters because the place to be is not necessarily on the phone, and its not in an app store, its on the web, via HTML.

HTML5

Apple’s Steve Jobs on HTML5, April 2010:

HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open.

Google on HTML5, October 2010:

Your GoogleTV site can look great with the right mix of video, audio, and visual effects. HTML5 provides this kind of rich content and more, and it’s supported in GoogleTV’s Chrome browser. For ideas, tutorials, and guidance, check out HTML5 Rocks.

H.264

Meanwhile, while it may be frustrating that Apple TV doesn’t support Flash, and Google TV doesn’t support Quicktime, they do both support H.264 video playback. Apple says “H.264 is the base format” of it’s Apple TV while Google says the “hardware in the GoogleTV supports…H.264 decoders”

You have to ask yourself, if you are looking for scale, what is the lowest common denominator here?

For TV on the web, it pretty much comes down to H.264 video in HTML5. The future of TV is not your mom’s app, it’s the browser. Unless of course the magnets keep us pinned to the vortex due to the effects of a fragmented market. Right now, all of us are unable to discover what we want, forcing Web video developers (and all others too) to tweak their apps for a hundred different versions of Android, on hundreds of different hardware platforms, plus all the iPhone, iPad, and Mac versions, plus Windows, plus this, and plus that, oh my. Jobs was right, what a mess.

Unless you develop for HTML5 with H.264.

Web First

For a publisher, the idea of charging for apps can certainly lead to a nice revenue stream. But giving away 30-50% of your revenue stream to someone for selling the app is not all that nice. In the long run, I’d rather have you come to my website, and I can just sell it to you there. If Apple has a store, and Android has a bunch of stores, and Nokia has one, and Sony and Windows, and everyone else under the sun has one, your business can have one too, no big deal.

The challenge then shifts from app building and revenue-share issues to discovery of your website. Yet the problem isn’t a new one, it’s a problem you face with apps anyway. As a distributor of TV content, if you want to get your content to the living room TVs, especially the ones on the market right now like the new Sony-Google TV or a nice new Apple TV, and you want to bypass the bureaucracy of others’ stores, and setup costs, and revenue shares, even as you want it to work great for the Apple TV experience and for the Google TV experience, and for any other living room TV integration—Boxee, Roku, you name it—format your website to detect the device and present the right display from your website. It’s that simple. Control the entire situation.

And even though you know you are going to develop apps for various TV platforms and other platforms anyway, especially because it’s a great way to get front and center, make them free and use them as a simple browser to get the apps built quickly and inexpensively. Consider developing for the web first so everyone can gain access and you can remain in control. There is a frenzy of “mobile first, web second” development philosophy in fashion right now, and rightfully so, but the living room TV isn’t mobile. It’s stationary. So when creating your apps, you can keep it simple and just point them to your own website where you can manage your own community, special features, distribution, promotion, advertising and sponsorship through a unique, centralized, cross platform environment called the web.

The beauty of HTML TV is that it’s a fancy protocol which everyone loves, it’s open, and it’s free.

Guest author Andrew Baron is the founder of Rocketboom and video discover site Magma.

Image via Danny Sullivan.

DONE! Ventures, a Manhattan Beach, California-based Internet marketing and publishing firm, is slapping NBC Universal with a lawsuit after a domain name sales deal went awry.

DONE! CEO Ben Padnos claims NBC Universal accepted an offer to sell the domain names Women.com and Women.net for $1 million, only to have President & CEO Jeff Zucker overrule and block the transaction after the agreement was reached.

The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, June 3, alleges breach of contract on those grounds. According to the complaint, which we’ve embedded below, NBC Universal signed an exclusive agreement with domain brokerage firm Sedo.com for the sale of both domain names, each for $600,000, about two weeks ago.

DONE! Ventures says it made a $1 million offer on May 21, and that NBC Universal accepted this offer on May 24. Three days after the agreement was reached, Sedo informed DONE! that Zucker personally overruled the transaction and the domains were no longer for sale.

DONE! is now asking the Court to enforce “specific performance”, requiring NBC Universal to transfer ownership of the domains. The company says it is currently developing an online content network for which the domain name Women.com is critical, as the target audience will consist of “modern, powerful, intelligent women”.

As far as we know, GE-owned NBC Universal has never used the Women.com and Women.net domain names for any active websites, even though the company owns and operates iVillage, a media outlet specifically targeting women.

We asked NBC Universal for comment and are awaiting their response.

Update: the official response is … no comment.

“This summer is going to be dangerous for anyone else in this space!“

That’s what Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley had to say when I spoke to him earlier about the service. Crowley is known for being outspoken. But he’s usually not that outspoken. But maybe he has reason to be.

I reached out to Crowley to ask him about NBC promoting Foursquare today. As you may have heard, The Today Show promoted a new partnership with the service earlier today (and did so on-air). But NBC itself also appears to be ready to heavily promote the service. This new mysterious “Fan It” site due to launch in 3+ days, implies partnerships with four main players: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and yes, Foursquare. That’s quite a crowd that Foursquare has been added to. And they know it.

“Foursquare is out of control!,” Crowley says. “I didn’t even know Today Show was happening! We’re running like a well-oiled machine!” It was after this that he made the comment about this summer and the competition. I asked Crowley if that meant the Yahoo deal was off the table now, as Silicon Alley Insider reported yesterday (and we’ve heard as well). “Ha ha. We’re just psyched to be building great product and people seem to love it,” Crowley responded. That’s an enthusiastic “no comment” at least!

Crowley also confirmed that Foursquare has 20 employees now. It was just this past October that Foursquare was living up to its name with only four employees. In other words, if they don’t sell, they’re going to need some new VC money soon, having taken only $1.35 million so far. Though some deals are bringing in revenue (but the company is not yet profitable).

“We are almost over the hump. Scaling outpaces engineering, engineering outpaces product, product outpaces biz. It’s all starting to come together,” Crowley notes. That certainly doesn’t sound like a man about to sell. Unless, of course, he’s playing me to get me to write that as a negotiating tactic. But when he was thought to be in the midst of negotiating with Yahoo several weeks ago, Crowley was saying almost nothing, so I have to believe he is just generally enthusiastic about the product right now — as all founders should be.

Going back to the comment at the top of this post. Clearly, Crowley knows Facebook is about to launch its entry into the check-in space. Yet he’s still bullish on Foursquare’s immediate future. That again signals to me that while Facebook will have its own checking-in method, they’re also going to federate check-ins from other services, like Foursquare. That can help the service with a million users gain a lot of exposure. And Crowley was meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week in New York City for some reason.

Update: MediaBistro has more on the NBC Fan It program;

Here is how it will work: starting May 17 users can go to NBC.com/Fanit and log in with the Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FourSquare or MyNBC accounts. After that, all they have to do is “Like”a show on Facebook, watch a video on NBC.com or talk about a program on the social networking sites, and they will earn points as their friends click through.

The points will be redeemable for merchandise an virtual goods (think FourSquare badges) as well as early looks at new and returning shows.

It was no surprise that the Olympics was a ratings blockbuster for NBC. The network’s ratings more than doubled during February Sweeps, up 105% from last year, according to Nielsen and RBC Capital Markets research. The interesting footnote, however, is GE’s cross-platform success on the Web and mobile. According to RBC Capital Market’s latest report, “Media and Entertainment: 1Q10 Preview & Outlook,” one third of the people watching the Olympics on their television were also on NBC’s website.

We may have stomped our feet and threw Twitter tantrums in response to NBC’s frustrating coverage—including chronic tape delays and the never-ending parade of the Marriage Ref. ads (Kelly Ripa’s laugh still echoes in my head)—but we watched, we clicked and we downloaded again and again. We watched Kim Yu-Na win the gold medal on live television then checked commentary online, we tracked the live blogging of the alpine skiers and watched a live web stream of curling. When we weren’t online many of us were fiddling with our Olympics iPhone apps.

In total, 1.2 million iPhone users downloaded NBC’s Olympics app. Reflecting on the growing success of cross-platform strategies, RBC notes: “Content owners haven’t found a way to monetize this kind of activity in any material way yet and it’s not clear how they can. But if it ultimately leads to more hours in front of the TV, increased engagement and meeting consumer preferences becomes a benefit even without direct monetization.”

To further illustrate the shift in media consumption habits, the report brings up the case of Entourage. In 2004 all of the ratings came from HBO channels, five years later in 2009,  54% came from HBO channels, 25% were video on demand, and 21% were DVR. As viewers diversify their media usage and spend more time online, we could see price drops. In the report, RBC predicts that Apple may win its battle to drop TV show prices to 99 cents from $1.99.  “If Apple can prove that price elasticity is such that lowering the price of TV episodes to only $0.99 could materially accelerate the consumption of download-to-own TV episodes, we’d expect the TV networks to move more aggressively on pricing to help alleviate some of the slackening demand in DVD-related TV content.” In other words, as people shift from DVDs to downloads, lowering the price of those downloads will help spur the growth of that market.

Looks like nobody in the TV industry wants the NBCU-Comcast merger to go down. And who could blame them! ABC, CBS, and Fox affiliates are afraid that, if the merger goes down, it’ll cause the clouds to darken and the streets to run red with the blood of something or other. Basically, they’re scared that the merger will put the in a very bad position indeed.

The deal is that Comcastis the largest cable provider in the country. We already know this. Should NBC and Comcast hook up, it could put the other networks in a hairy situation. The fear is that Comcast could try to play favorites: “Oh, CBS, you want to be on our cable system. Well, as you know, we’re friends with NBC, so you’re gonna have to put up a couple extra dollars to get on this cable system, bub.”

That’s a very cartoony way of looking at the situation, but that’s sorta what’s going on.

You know how people say banks are too big to fail? NBC-Comcast would be to big for its own good.

Given the Internet’s experienceswith Comcast over the years, you can assume the nerd-rage is palpable.

Testers were challenged to search the sites for bugs – performing a combination of exploratory, functional and usability testing. At its conclusion, participants filled out a detailed survey in which they ranked each site based on video quality, ease of use, community features and actual TV content/shows. After carefully reviewing each bug and survey response, uTest awarded roughly $4,000 in prize money based on the quality of bugs and feedback.

Top findings:

- Nearly 50% of survey respondents chose video quality as the attribute most important to them when evaluating an online TV network. NBC.com scored highest in video quality.
- Ease of use was deemed most important by 33% of the participants, followed by TV content & shows (12%) and community features (5%). CBS.com scored highest in ease of use.
- 70% of respondents watch at least one show online each week, with more than one quarter watching four or more. 7% watch seven or more programs.
- More than 10% of the total reported bugs were found on mobile devices.
- None of the TV network support mobile video watching as they rely on Flash (tested on Blackberry, iPhone, Android and other mobile platforms).
- Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities of varying degrees of severity were reported on three out of the four sites.

TV Network comparison (top-two box score of testers who rated each site as “excellent” or “good”):

Here’s the full report:

The coverage of the Winter Olympics on NBC has been painful to watch. In addition to the tape delays which ruined the outcomes for anyone paying attention to any other news, sports or social media outlet other than NBC, there are a lot of other complaints. In between the hard-hitting reports of polar bears in the Canadian North and life among the lumberjacks, NBC did manage to squeeze in some actual Winter games, which were matched in quantity by the constant loop of the same handful of commercials on heavy rotation for McDonald’s, Visa, AT&T, Diet Coke, and NBC’s upcoming shows Parenthood and the Marriage Ref. (Thank goodness for DVRs).

We already know that NBC’s handling of its Olympics coverage sucks, if only because everyone on Twitter says so. Right now, Twitter Sentiment shows that 73 percent of Tweets about “NBC Olympics” are negative. But what are they complaining about exactly, and is it just Twitter? Some new data from Crimson Hexagon, another sentiment analysis service for brands, shows the breakdown of hate:

Tape Delay Horrible: 19%
NBC Is Awful In General: 13%
Commentators Are Lacking: 9%
Not Enough Sports: 20%
Mobile/Web Lousy: 12%
Other Complaints: 12%
Happily Watching: 15%

These numbers come from an analysis of nearly 20,000 Tweets and 5,700 blog posts and forum comments. On Twitter alone, the biggest complaint by far (25 percent) is the tape delay. But that’s what you’d expect from a bunch of realtime addicts. Overall when you count blogs and forums that complaint ranked second, barely nudged out by the lack of enough actual sports coverage. Notably, only 15 of people on the Web were happy with NBC’s coverage.

Perhaps people just go to the Web to complain, and happy viewers had no reason to log on because they were enthralled by those polar bears. But something tells me the Web’s view reflects the general one. How do you rate NBC’s coverage?

NBC is driving people on the Internet crazy by tape-delaying coverage of the Olympics until primetime. Okay, maybe it’s only driving Henry Blodget crazy, and everyone on Twitter.

Well, not everyone on Twitter—68 percent, according to a recent reading I took on Twitter Sentiment. Roughly two thirds of Tweets about the NBC Olympics are negative. Some examples of the venting occurring on Twitter about NBC’s delayed Olympics coverage:

NBC sucks. Why the hell is the Olympics not live

Watching the #Olympics on #NBC since I love watching hours old tape of events I know the results of.

What’s the point of watching the women’s downhill super combined when you already know that Lindsey Vonn crashed because half the people you follow on Twitter decided to spoil the race earlier in the day when it actually happened? Sports need to be shown live because half the drama is in the outcome. The excitement just kind of fizzles otherwise.

Everything else is realtime, NBC can’t expect the country to just wait for Bob Costas to start rolling tape.

1. NBC Olympics: NBC, which is covering the Olympics on TV, has also set up a site where you can catch the latest scores, news and select video coverage of the competitions (powered by Microsoft Silverlight). You can also see profiles of athletes and streams of Tweets from athletes on the U.S. Olympic teams. Unfortunately, it appears that NBC is severely limiting the streaming of competitions and the ceremonies to the general public, so video will most probably be comprised of short highlights. But if you are a cable subscriber, you will be able to access 400 hours of live streaming of the events, but will need to prove that you subscribe to premium-cable service to access full and live videos.

2. Vancouver 2010: Sponsored by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the games, this site offers schedule of events, up-to-date results and maps of the various event sites in Vancouver.

3. Facebook: On Facebook, there is a dedicated page for the Vancouver Games from the Organizing Committee as well as a page from the International Olympics Committee, which will collects Facebook updates from athletes and post up-to-date photos from the various events.

4. Twitter: For real-time updates from the athletes, Twitter has complied a list of verified Olympic athletes. A site called Twitter-Athletes also provides the handles of many of the Olympians at the winter games.

5. Flickr: Flickr has teamed up the International Olympic Committee to create an official photo group on the photo sharing site. The IOC will also use the Flickr group to publish its official event photos, as well as upload images to its own Flickr photo stream.

6. Yahoo Sports: Yahoo Sports has launched a Winter Olympics site that will offer news coverage, photos, videos, medal counts and statistics. This week, Yahoo announced that it has also optimized its search engine for Winter Olympics news and stats.

7. Yahoo Mobile: Yahoo has also rolled out a mobile web site to allow users to news, event schedules, stats and pictures on the go.

8. Google: Google has optimized its mobile search to provide better results for Olympics searches. On Google’s mobile search interface, you can search for the name of your favorite sport, and the engine will give you the latest info about game results, schedules, medal count and more. On Android and iPhone devices, the search engine’s realtime search feature will show you the latest updates related to the games within the same search results. Google has also rolled out a special homepage for Search (see below).

9. iPhone Apps: Apple has recommended several iPhone apps to help you keep up with news, schedules and more, including NBC’s official Olympics App, Canadian TV channel CTV’s Olympics App, push notifications-enabled Vancouver Games, and Olympic Games news aggregatror Winter Games Grub.

Photo credit/Flickr/s.yume

This is it. Tonight’s edition of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien will be the last one starring Coco. Come March 1, Mr. Bland himself, Jay Leno, re-takes the show, placating NBC’s affiliates and his elderly fans. We’re all Team Conan here, till the bitter end, so you’d better not miss it tonight. Watch it live, DVR it, watch it on Hulu, grab it off some torrent site… just watch it. Conan shall rise again~!

Game over, friends. NBC just released a statement saying it had reached a deal with Conan O’Brien that sees him bumped off The Tonight Show and bumped into a large sack of money worth $45 million. Of that $45 million, Conan will keep $33 million, the rest of which will go to his 200+ person staff as severance. Conan’s free to start a new show as of September, 2010. Oh, and Leno comes back to The Tonight Show on March 1.

For Conan fans—we’re all Conan fans here—it’s bittersweet. None of us wanted to see Conan leave The Tonight Show, but if NBC is going to be a jerk about it then he might as well walk away with a nice chunk of change. That Conan is differing $12 million out of his own pocket to help out his staff tells you what kind of man Conan is. A rarity in Hollywood, to be sure.

Conan’s manager told The Wall Street Journal the he wants to get back on the air as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we’ve offered Conan the opportunity to do a little bit of tech blogging in his spare time between shows.

As for Leno, yeah, he returns to The Tonight Show on March 1, after NBC airs the Winter Olympics. I don’t know how I, and others like me, can register my disdain. It’s not like I can watch Leno’s new Tonight Show less than I watched his old Tonight Show. You can’t watch less than zero.

Ron, from Ron and Fez on Sirius XM, said it best yesterday: Leno really ought to have moved on like a gentleman in 2004 when NBC first asked him to step aside for Conan. And what was Leno doing with the show? Jay Walking, something we’ve seen since the days of Howard Stern? (I said something positive about Howard Stern! Call the police, I must be crazy!) More wacky headline typos? Like, I’m sorry, but if you laugh at a newspaper typo you should be sent to America’s Gulag: New Jersey.

That is all.

All of us here at CrunchGear are fairly angry at the way NBC has treated you, Conan. So here’s our offer: if you and the peacock decide to part company (and you really ought to, provided the network takes care of your staff and everyone else who moved from New York to Los Angeles, and provided you walk away with some fat cash), we’d like to offer you an internship. That’s right: Conan O’Brien, CrunchGear intern. That has a nice ring to it, no?

Just ask Jimin what it’s like to be a CG intern. Since I don’t know where Jimin is right now, I’ll give you a preview: have you ever wanted more USB thumb drives than you know what to do with? CG interns get them in spades, since that’s how companies give you product images and whatnot from live events. (I personally took home something like 10 USB thumb drives from last week’s CES.) What you do with these USB thumb drives after you copy over the data is your business—maybe you’d like to paint President Obama’s face on them and sell ‘em in Union Square in New York? That’s your call.

All of this assumes, of course, that NBC doesn’t consider interning for CrunchGear to be a competing job. You’re going to have a few months of non-compete time, right, before you (hopefully!) get a show at another network? Spend ‘em here with us, you’ll have a blast. We’ll make jokes in the official CrunchGear Chat Room.

So Conan, if you’re thinking of a way to sit out your non-compete time, the door is wide open for you here at CrunchGear.

We forgot to mention this, but if you want to buy Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show set make your way to Craigslist. Conan is asking for your best offer, or Coldplay tickets if you’re willing to trade. Boo, NBC!

GE will contribute to the joint venture NBCU’s businesses valued at $30 billion, including its cable networks, filmed entertainment, televised entertainment, theme parks, and unconsolidated investments, subject to $9.1 billion in debt.

Comcast will put in its cable networks (including E!, Versus and the Golf Channel), its ten regional sports networks, and certain digital media properties, collectively valued at $7.25 billion. Comcast has also agreed to pay GE approximately $6.5 billion in cash. Former E! Networks President and CEO Ted Harbert will be heading the new entity, as he was recently promoted to President and CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group.

GE expects to realize $9.8 billion pre-tax in cash before debt reduction and transaction fees and after buyout of the Vivendi stake. GE expects to realize approximately $8 billion in cash after paying down the existing NBCU debt and transaction fees.

Headquarters for the business will remain in New York. The joint venture board will have three directors nominated by Comcast and two nominated by GE.

The transaction is subject to receipt of various regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, which is expected to be a very rocky road.

(Image source)

NBC is gearing up for the 2010 Winter Olympics with some changes to its mainstay site, NBCOlympics.com, scheduled to go live tomorrow. (See screenshots below). Once again, just as it did with the 2008 Summer Olympics, NBC will be using a video player based on Microsoft Silverlight technology to offer full HD videos. Except this time, the video player will have DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them.

The video player will also incorporate Facebook Connect, to allow people to chat with their friends as they are watching the events. NBC expects the addition of Facebook chat to make the videos a more social and engaging experience, and also hopes viewing times will subsequently increase.

The site is also giving its photo slideshows an upgrade, with the ability to pan across high-res photos of all the action shots and do deep zooms on Lindsey Vonn’s boot buckle. Of course, there will also be sections of the sites devoted to TV listings, medal counts, and “Tweets and Blogs.” But the more visually appealing NBC can make the site, the more people will want to stick around.

Oh, dear. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was on The Today Show (international viewers: The Today Show is a morning news and entertainment program that airs on NBC, a big TV network here) to unveil Windows 7. Call me crazy, but isn’t that a first-gen MacBook Pro in the background? Good job, NBC!

I’ve embedded the video from Hulu for our U.S. readers, and for international readers here’s a few screencaps:

Once again, bravo, NBC, for a job well done! (And people call us sloppy, with a budget one-zillionth that of The Today Show!)