Every media executive today confronts the same rapidly changing distribution models that are rocking the content businesses. But not all of them work for G.E. According to the G.E. way, you grow or risk having your budget slashed. So far, Zucker has delivered steady earnings growth that has kept G.E. satisfied—seven straight quarters through the second quarter of 2008. For that quarter, NBC Universal kicked $909 million in profit upstairs on $3.9 billion in revenue, up 1 percent from the previous year. Zucker’s boss, Jeff Immelt, the C.E.O. of G.E., says he understands that NBC Universal, for the moment, is not in an easy business to grow. “It’s not a 15 percent grower,” Immelt says. “It’s not a zero-percent grower, and I’m fine with that.”

Immelt categorically dismissed rumors that G.E. is going to spin off NBC Universal. “There’s nothing to that ever. Every business in G.E. has to earn its way, sure.” The rumor, he says, “has been a concoction of other people. It hasn’t come from inside G.E. This is an inherently good business in a profitable industry, and one we run very well.”
Following the lead of his predecessor, Bob Wright, Zucker has continued to steadily diversify NBC Universal. Lately, he’s ramped it up, selling the Sundance Channel (a joint venture with CBS and Robert Redford) for $500 million and going on a serious buying and selling spree—mostly buying—of other cable properties. He snapped up Oxygen and purchased 26 percent of India’s NDTV.

When we meet in his office, he is waiting for the lawyers and bankers down the hall to agree on the language in the deal memo for his acquisition of Landmark Communications’ Weather Channel. (The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are NBC Universal’s partners in the deal.) “I don’t think any media company has been as active in the past 16 months as we have,” Zucker proclaims.

Other media companies had sought to buy the Weather Channel, primarily because it reaches 97 percent of U.S. cable households, but the final bidding had come down to Time Warner against NBC Universal. Zucker emerged as the winner after Landmark chose the cash-rich NBC deal. In the short term, at least, the move is likely to please G.E.: The deal will add between $30 million and $40 million to NBC Universal’s net income in the first year.

Zucker has been outspoken in lauding the virtues of cable over broadcast: “Hey, two revenue streams versus one,” he says. “You don’t have to be a genius.” Oxygen, which was widely seen as a bargain when Zucker made the deal, has given NBC Universal one of the top cable networks among the sought-after demographic of female viewers aged 18 to 49.

The Weather Channel, Zucker believes, will give NBC Universal a similar boost, not only in short-term earnings but also for NBC’s news brand.

When it comes to cutting costs, Zucker’s attempt to take on the profligate tendencies of an industry not exactly known for its frugality has made him the No. 1 advocate of reforming the TV development process. Until the industry understands what the distribution models will be for shows and how they will be monetized, Zucker believes NBC can’t keep buying content based on yesterday’s revenue models. His point comes down to this: A hit sitcom today—say NBC’s My Name Is Earl—might garner only a 5 share, or about 7 million viewers, while a hit sitcom 20 years ago would typically do a 17 share, or about 15 million viewers. Despite that decrease in viewers and a less pronounced drop in advertising revenue, the development and production costs for these shows haven’t changed, based as they are on union contracts, costly deals with production companies, and multimillion-dollar budgets for making pilot episodes.

Zucker’s most audacious and controversial move was to dramatically slash the number of pilots NBC will produce each season. Instead of about 20, he’s funding about five. “It was just crazy,” he says of the pilot process. “It was no predictor of the success of the series, and we were wasting a tremendous amount of money, so we decided to have the courage of our convictions and go straight to series with scripts we liked and believed in.”

Peter Chernin, Fox’s chief executive, is quick to agree. “The industry can either adapt and go through a rational process, or the industry can fail to adapt, in which case the market will do it for them,” he says. “The latter will mean that people go out of business, in which case it will be much more draconian. That’s really what Jeff is talking about, trying to adapt to a cost structure that reflects the marketplace.”