Nbc Awaits Word On Deal With Pax; Msnbc A Priority

NBC will soon learn the fate of its partnership with Paxson Communications.

According to NBC chairman and CEO Robert Wright, who met reporters at the Television Critics Assn. press tour Wednesday, a San Francisco judge is expected to decide in the next couple of months whether NBC can walk away from its bumpy relationship with Paxson.

Four years ago, GE-owned NBC bought a stake in family-friendly Pax and its 65 mostly UHF stations in exchange for $415 million, with an option to buy more later. But after NBC announced plans to purchase Telemundo in October for $2.7 billion, Paxson chairman Lowell "Bud" Paxson filed arbitration claims against the peacock. By purchasing the Spanish-language broadcaster, Paxson alleged, NBC made it impossible from a regulatory standpoint to complete a planned acquisition of Pax.

NBC executives, however, retort that Paxson simply wants to ditch the contract so he can sniff out a richer deal elsewhere.

"I think this (dispute) is all about Bud trying to get the deal undone so he can find another buyer," Wright told reporters. NBC seems confident the arbitrator — whom Wright said has finished hearing both sides of the case and is currently writing his opinion — will see it that way as well. Wright added that the relationship between NBC and Pax remains "pretty good" despite the arbitration.

Of course, NBC has bigger problems than Pax at the moment. Wright made it clear that his boss, new GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, has made a top priority of fixing MSNBC, which is perennially stuck in third place behind Fox News Channel and CNN in the cable news race.

"He would like to see us do better in places where we're not," Wright said of Immelt.

Privately, an NBC executive confirmed that senior management expects a major turnaround at the news network within a year.

Wright, who is also vice chairman and executive officer at GE, defended the parent company's accounting and attacked the expertise of some recent critics of corporate financial reporting.

Wright said he was "absolutely comfortable" that GE could withstand close scrutiny of its books. In a somewhat provocative aside, however, he lamented that the complexity of corporate accounting sometimes made it impossible to explain in convenient sound bites. "We've tried … to take everything we do and make it transparent," he said. "It just can't be done."

In another eyebrow-raising comment, Wright said that former NBC West Coast president Scott Sassa was at work on a "secret project" for the peacock. Sassa exited his post in late May, but Wright said at the time that he hoped to keep Sassa in the NBC fold in some way.

"He's working with (NBC president and chief operating officer) Andy (Lack) and a number of people on a project involving a number of major investments that we have as a company … for programming ideas and programming strategies," Wright said in response to a question about Sassa's status at NBC.