Brian Roberts
Image by getty images
Brian Roberts was a toddler when his father, Ralph, founded Comcast in Tupelo, Miss., in 1963 — a time when cable television seemed as exotic as sushi at a bar mitzvah. Nearly half a century later, Roberts is chairman and CEO of a company that is the nation’s largest video provider, largest Internet service provider and fourth-largest phone company, and is now the majority owner of NBCUniversal and its vast array of stations and programming.
The deal to buy NBC in 2011 was greeted skeptically (and with worries about monopolization), just as Comcast’s earlier purchase of AT&T Broadband had been considered a risk. But Roberts, now 53, has proved to be as savvy a businessman as his father. NBC spent billions to cover the 2012 London Olympics and ended up surpassing even the most optimistic projections for audience, with more than 210 million Americans watching some part of the games. And after years of hugging last place in network ratings, the most recent rankings showed NBC leading in the key 18- to 49-year-old demographic.
Tall, lanky and unprepossessing, Roberts continues to run his company from its home base in Philadelphia, where he has stayed close enough to his Jewish roots to earn awards from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Shoah Foundation. An all-American squash player, he has competed in five Maccabiah Games in Israel, winning one gold and four silver medals. Will he join the movement to make squash an Olympic sport in 2016?
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture A pocket guide to the Jewish grandmothers of Mexico
-
Opinion Israel is choosing to inflict misery on Gaza
-
Fast Forward Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters in Brooklyn as Columbia library takeover fallout continues
-
Opinion This week proved it: Trump’s approach to antisemitism at Columbia is horribly ineffective
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.