Comcast

Comcast Corporation is a diversified global leader in entertainment services and telecommunications. Comcast Corporation is a leading cable, telecommunications, and entertainment firm. The company's earliest roots are in cable television, and Comcast Cable is now the fourth largest cable company in the United States, with 4.4 million customers in 21 states. Comcast Cellular serves 783,000 cellular telephone customers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Comcast also is a partner with Sprint Corp., Tele-Communications Inc., and Cox Communications Inc. in the Sprint PCS digital wireless telephone joint venture. In content, which provides the most revenue of the company's three sectors, Comcast holds a 57 percent stake in QVC, Inc., the leading cable television shopping channel; has a controlling interest with the Walt Disney Company in E! Entertainment Television, a cable channel devoted to entertainment and celebrity programming; and holds a majority interest in the Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball team, the Philadelphia Flyers NHL hockey team, the Philadelphia Phantoms minor league hockey team, two indoor sports arenas, and Comcast-Sports Net, a 24-hour regional sports network serving the Philadelphia area. The company also holds stakes in a number of other content providers. Controlled by the Roberts family of Philadelphia, Comcast also has the powerful backing of Microsoft Corp., which owns 11.5 percent of the company. Comcast has its origin in the early 1960s with American Cable Systems, Inc., a small cable operation serving Tupelo, Mississippi. At the time, American was one of only a few community antenna television (CATV) services in the nation. The CATV business was predicated on the fact that rural areas were underserved by commercial television stations which catered to large metropolitan areas. Without CATVs huge antennas that pulled in distant signals, consumers in these areas had little use for television. Although required to pay for CATV, customers considered the benefits worth the cost. Roberts turned his attention to the bigger potential market of Philadelphia. In 1966 he bid successfully for cable franchises in Abington, Cheltenham, and Upper Darby, all northern suburbs of Philadelphia. He then purchased the Westmoreland cable system that served four other communities in western Pennsylvania. To achieve better economies of scale, Roberts dovetailed Westmoreland's operations with those of his other franchises. After establishing a strong foothold in suburban Philadelphia, Roberts extended his company's presence into six additional local communities. Highly leveraged from this acquisition binge, but eager for more opportunities, Roberts enlisted the Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper for a joint venture to build additional cable systems serving Sarasota and Venice, Florida. As part of a limited diversification in 1968, Ralph Roberts joined his brother Joe--by then a minor partner in American but also an executive vice-president of Muzak Corporation--in purchasing a large franchise to provide the subscription "elevator music" service in Orlando, Florida. Having decided that the name American Cable Systems sounded too generic for his growing company, Roberts decided in 1969 to change its name. In an effort to build a more technological identity, he took portions of the words "communication" and "broadcast," creating Comcast Corporation and reincorporating the company in Pennsylvania. Comcast reorganized its operations somewhat in 1970, selling off its Florida operations to Storer Communications and forming a limited partnership to purchase Multiview Cable, a local franchise serving Hartford County in Maryland. Limited partnerships enabled Comcast to finance growth with a minimal use of operating funds and were used to finance subsequent acquisitions. Predicting growth in the Muzak business, Comcast also acquired a franchise in 1970 for the service in Denver. The company later purchased Muzak franchises in