Consolidating MSNBC & CNBC’s Operation: Under Which Roof?

Following up on today’s NY Post story: An NBC employee, who requested anonymity, tells TVNewser that some sort of MSNBC/CNBC merger would be in line with GE’s strategy to consolidate its production facilities. NBC’s news division is apparently way over budget — and cuts are probably coming as a result. Consolidating the networks would help streamline the operation.

An MSNBC insider writes to TVNewser: “Very little in the Post’s piece is new or very meaningful. Much of NBC News operations — technical, newsgathering — is already in Secaucus. Although ‘merge operations’ is used, the inference that they’d be making one channel out of it is clearly wrong. The NBC News Channel stuff is the most widely known secret in the business. In short, this is about putting operations under one roof. The question is, which roof, and whose commute gets lengthened.”

> Reuters: “The Post reported that NBC’s ‘Nightly News’ show and the ‘Today’ show would remain in New York City under the plan.”

> Inside Cable: “…MSNBC could use a new building. On the other hand, CNBC just moved in to a brand new building only last year. It is state of the art. To now uproot CNBC at this point would be a pretty large financial hit to take…”

> Update: 3:16pm: “The rumors of CNBC and MSNBC going under one roof is old news,” a tipster says. “With CNBC building their new headquarters in New Jersey two years ago, there is still one building that is unoccupied. The NOC, or Network Operations Center, has been built at CNBC headquarters, so all technology and master control are already located there…”