Has Fox Feud Helped Cool GE's Ardor for Owning NBC?

It's obviously not a major factor, but it's interesting to ponder whether General Electric's openness to a deal that might involve giving up majority control of NBC Universal has anything to do with the headaches that the Fox News Channel-MSNBC feud have dropped in the lap of GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

The mere fact that GE brass would be drawn into past (and unsuccessful) efforts to negotiate a kind of ceasefire suggest that Immelt was tired of having Bill O'Reilly giving out his email address and accusing him of secretly working on behalf of Iran to undermine U.S. interests. (That's only a slight exaggeration of the charges that O'Reilly has thrown at GE and NBC U as retaliation for allowing Keith Olbermann to name him "Worst Person in the World" every other night.)

Of course, the larger reason has to do with economic factors and NBC's degraded place within the TV universe. The old "Six Sigma" philosophy says to be first in every one of your businesses. At this point, as evidenced by "The Jay Leno Show" cost-saving maneuver, NBC is playing defense, not offense, and Universal has experienced a similarly underwhelming run at the boxoffice.

Foremost, though, Jeff Zucker has stated repeatedly that NBC Universal is primarily a cable company now, and those assets mesh perfectly with Comcast's profile.

Still, if nothing else Immelt could see shedding some of the peripheral grief that goes with the stewardship of NBC in these politically polarized times -- including the assaults from O'Reilly -- as a welcome bonus to a possible deal.