Comcast Corporation Case Analysis

This memo is aimed to evaluate the overall television industry today and to provide a brief overview of one of the industry leading players - Comcast Corporation’s current business situation, specifically, to examine its internal strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats in the external environment. More importantly, the key challenges that the company is currently facing and the potential solutions to theses problem will be discussed.

The current U.S. broadcast and cable television industry, growing at an average annual rate of 6% with a small number of large companies in the market, is in the mature stage of the industry life cycle. Although the number of Pay TV subscription has declined over the past five years, most Pay TV providers managed to achieve modest rates of revenue growth. At the same time, with the proliferation of online streaming, the number of programs in the market is on the rise as the number of channels to broadcast them has grown significantly. In addition, the rapid growth of internet has allowed TV producers to make content available on-demand, presenting new
Comcast would add nearly 30 million subscribers and achieve a much higher penetration rate in the market, which also gives them the opportunity to increase price, and thus profitability. Nonetheless, Pay TV is declining and the rate of penetration decline is accelerating as viewing television content online become increasingly popular. Powerful competitive forces such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu, and now CBS’s standalone product “CBS All-Access” and HBO’s partnership with Apple has formed strong threats to Comcast. With the changing consumer demands and the distinctive needs recognized regarding different customer segments, the question of whether its current business model will still be viable in the marketplace has