NBCUniversal’s head of advertising is feeling optimistic about the company’s upcoming spinoff from Comcast, even if he won’t speculate too specifically on the future.
The media company’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships avoided a direct answer when asked about whether the spinoff of the media company — which houses Universal Pictures, Peacock, Sky, Bravo and other key film and TV assets, along with a lucrative theme park business — from its cable parent was a sign of preparing to sell elsewhere to another giant like Netflix or Apple.
That’s not his job to tell the world, he said.
“If you could talk to Mike Cavanagh and ask him, my boss. I’m not dumb enough to answer that one,” Marshall jokingly told TheWrap during TheWrap’s annual business conference TheGrill. “Mike has said we’re not doing this spinoff to merge or to be sold. The idea for us is to take all the assets I just went through and grow. Growth is the focus for our company as we move forward with those assets.”
Indeed, NBCUniversal has been shedding assets for a while as it sets itself up for future success, whether via M&A or not. The company spun off its cable assets into Versant, a separate publicly traded company that still operates closely with NBCU through commercial, advertising and operational service agreements.
Going through that spinoff makes the next one more of a promising development than a frightening one.
“When Versant spun, and if you watch CNBC, they were crabby. They were like, “We don’t want to leave the mothership.’ I think if you ask them today, they are like, ‘This was the right move for them longterm,’” Marshall said. “Change is hard. Spinning out of something is a big change. But we’re 100 years old, and our 100th year is our best year we’ve ever had. We feel pretty good about heading into the next century.”
Part of that new direction involves a new partnership with YouTube that includes bundling streaming service Peacock with YouTube premium starting in early 2027.
Marshall said the bundle allows for the advertising team to sell off of the strong performance of shows like late night staples like “Saturday Night Live” or “The Tonight Show” on YouTube, the top TV distributor for the last three years.
“You’ll have 4 million people that watch [‘SNL’] live on Saturday night. You’ll have another couple million that will watch it the next day on streaming, and then you have hundreds of millions that watch clips. Now you’ll be able to have all of that in one buy,” Marshall boasted.
And there’s at least one frontman who is happy about getting better at monetizing on YouTube: Jimmy Fallon.
“Jimmy sends me lots of texts about how many people saw his videos. He’s like, ‘Go make more money on that,’ ” Marshall added. “We’re trying.”
Such partnerships also help with big milestone events, of which NBCU houses many. The company is celebrating 100 years of NBC, currently the No. 1 broadcast network after hosting this year’s Super Bowl and the Milano-Cortina Olympics. The company will again host the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, and this year also celebrates 100 years of the Macy’s Day Parade and 75 years of the “Today” show.
And in a TV marketplace where viewers get to choose their own schedules, Marshall says it’s time to revolutionize how we measure success.
“How do these big events become everyday business opportunities? That’s what we have to be talking about, not as focused on what last night’s overnight rating was,” he said.
