If Comcast goes Hollywood, it has to learn the culture

If Comcast Corp. executives want their proposed acquisition of NBC Universal Inc. to succeed, they would do well to remember the three C's: content, creativity, and collagen.

Oh, and a fourth: cash. Lots of it, to pay for the first three.

Can a staid cable TV company from a city where celebrity trials feature state senators, not music legends, survive in a world of egomaniacs, face-lifts, and budget-busting production costs?

"To get those big hits, you have to lose a little pragmatism and throw money on gut instinct," said business writer David Magee, who published a book this year about Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive officer of General Electric Co., the company in talks to possibly sell a majority stake in NBC Universal to Comcast.

Of course, Comcast is not exactly a Hollywood ingenue. The Philadelphia company owns several cable networks, including E!, chronicler of all things celluloid.

But owning NBC Universal would transform Comcast from bit player to writer, producer, director, and star. Besides the NBC broadcast network, NBCU owns Universal Pictures, cable networks including Bravo, USA, and MSNBC, and three amusement parks.

Stars such as Jay Leno and Tina Fey would suddenly find themselves working for Comcast chief executive officer Brian L. Roberts, who runs the country's largest cable company, but has not sought the celebrity spotlight.

At last year's wedding of Miramax founder Harvey Weinstein to model and designer Georgina Chapman, Roberts was seated with a group of models and did not seem comfortable, one of his friends told BusinessWeek. An aggressive negotiator and squash player, Roberts relaxes at his vacation home in Martha's Vineyard.

If they complete this deal, Roberts and his team will face many challenges. They will have to master the casual California schmooze. In a world where image is all, they may have to carry lie detectors. And they will have to let the cash flow like media moguls to create programs and movies that lure audiences.

First, the superficial stuff.

"I joke that my spiritual journey is sort of scrubbing out the Philadelphia confrontational style and leaning into the very nice, easygoing California culture," said Dana Calvo, who grew up in Moorestown but now writes for TV (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and her new legal drama, Laney Sparrow) and lives in L.A.

"If you grow up in a big city in the Northeast, you've got some edge," Calvo said.

In the Los Angeles area, people spend more time saying hello and making small talk because they know that the woman waiting tables one day might be starring in a pilot the next.

"You better be nice to everyone, because anybody could be your boss tomorrow," she said.

And then there's the more casual relationship with the truth that is a hallmark of the entertainment industry.

"Inflation of reality is a huge part of reality here. Hype is a part of our lifeblood," said Lynda Obst, a producer whose movie, The Invention of Lying, opens this weekend. "We sell the American dream, so sometimes we sell it to ourselves."

In her book, Hello, He Lied and Other Tales from the Hollywood Trenches, Obst describes how media mogul David Geffen once told her casually during a meeting that she should consider collagen injections.

Her advice for anyone doing business there: "Get color. Women are not allowed to go gray here. Men can have some silver, not a lot. You should also know which water to order and which restaurants are in. This changes every week."

The bigger cultural shift may be understanding the entertainment business. Even though Comcast has dipped its toe in those waters, the company still looks more like a utility. It has an almost-captive audience, and it raises its rates for TV and Internet access yearly.

"It's the difference between the conduit business and the content business. One is at the rational, hierarchical, bean-counting end of the spectrum. The other - though it's just as profit-oriented - is also a culture of magical thinking, superstition, and illusion," said Martin Kaplan, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications.

The question, Kaplan said, is whether Roberts would "empower some Hollywood hands to manage on his behalf - and risk hearing, 'No, it doesn't work that way in this tribe out here.' "