GE owns Universal?

[mitros]

Well, it's news to me. Was I asleep when this went down, and did I miss the thread? Yahoo financial news has an article today, by Aristotle Munarriz, that states that all theme parks had an increase in business, except GE, who inherited Universal??? If this is the case, maybe that's why they pulled their sponsorships at WDW? The part that is news to me is the part about GE owning Universal. I really have to stop visiting New Jersey. Everytime I do, I come back in a fog. :confused3

[ChrisFL]

yep GE owns NBC which owns Universal...or something like that.

IMO the reason for the decline is lack of advertising and new attractions this year, but that may soon change from what i keep hearing from my inside sources... ;)

[Horace Horsecollar]

The part that is news to me is the part about GE owning Universal.
General Electric (GE) became the owner of NBC in 1986, when GE acquired RCA, the parent of NBC. (GE sold off off other parts of RCA that they didn't want to keep.) Then, in 2004, GE took on the TV and movie assets of Vivendi Universal and combined them with NBC. The new business unit was named NBC Universal.

From General Electric 2004 Annual Report (Our Businesses) (http://www.ge.com/ar2004/ob.jsp):

NBC Universal
Principal businesses are the furnishing of U.S. network television services to more than 230 affiliated stations, production of television programs, the production and distribution of motion pictures, operation of 29 VHF and UHF television broadcasting stations, operation of cable/satellite networks around the world, operation of theme parks, and investment and programming activities in multimedia and the Internet.

In 1996, The Walt Disney Company completed the acquisition Capital Cities/ABC — so for a number of years GE (the parent of NBC) sponsored IllumiNations at Epcot, a theme park owned by Disney (the parent of ABC).

[Another Voice]

The interesting question at the moment is how long NBC Universal will continue to own the Universal parks...

[Horace Horsecollar]

The interesting question at the moment is how long NBC Universal will continue to own the Universal parks...
Good point.

There was an interesting article about this subject in May 2004: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m5072/is_18_26/ai_n6036146