By Jessica Toonkel

Comcast co-Chief Executive Brian Roberts spent his 67th birthday finalizing a plan to split the cable and entertainment company his family built in two.

"Ralph would be excited," one of his children texted him Sunday, referring to Ralph Roberts, the patriarch who co-founded and ran Comcast for nearly 40 years.

The next morning, the cable company, home to "Saturday Night Live," "Sunday Night Football" and Universal Pictures announced a plan to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky, establishing a pure-play media business that operates separately from Comcast. The move dismantles the bet on convergence Roberts made 15 years ago.

Investors and industry executives have spent years asking what Roberts, known as a deal junkie, would do next.

"In my mind one word describes it which is 'finally,'" said cable titan John Malone, a friend of Roberts and shareholder who said he supports the split. Malone said he ribs Roberts about missed business opportunities to diversify the businesses. "I tease him about woulda, coulda, shoulda," Malone said.

While storied Hollywood companies like Paramount and Warner changed hands over the past few years, Roberts held steady from his perch in Philadelphia — until he couldn't any longer.

The marriage with NBCUniversal, once centered on the power of making and delivering TV, was strained by the ascendance of streaming and its far less forgiving economics. Roberts tried to make it all work, finding ways to package his Peacock service into broadband plans and streaming TV sets.

The famously cautious executive grew more aggressive, exploring a joint streaming venture with Paramount and, to the surprise of some around him, making a $27 billion long-term NBA bet meant to juice Peacock.

In the end, he concluded that a media business built on growth wagers and the prospect of hits should no longer be tied to Comcast, which has become more of a broadband utility. Even the stalwart cable business now faces its own competitive pressures from new internet offerings from cellphone carriers and Elon Musk's Starlink.

With Comcast shares down around 30% in the year before the split was announced, there were few easy answers. Roberts, who has said he and his father were builders, concluded that the best way to grow was to break up.

The understated executive hopes the split will give each part of the company more flexibility to pursue strategic opportunities needed to compete.

"This is the best path to continue to build these two great companies and play offense," he told employees at a town hall Monday. Roberts has said he plans to stay involved and the family will hold a one-third voting stake in both companies.

Cable scion

Roberts grew up in the cable business and was close to his father, who founded the company. As a teenager, he interned for Comcast, spending high school and college summers climbing telephone poles and selling cable subscriptions door to door.

He led a hostile bid for AT&T Broadband in 2001 that massively expanded the company's footprint, and became CEO the following year. Under Roberts, Comcast began selling a bundle of TV, high-speed internet, phone service and on-demand video that generated reliable revenue.

He then turned to content, growing Comcast's stable of networks and making one of his boldest moves: a hostile bid to buy Disney. The play ultimately failed, but signaled to the market that Comcast wanted to own programming.

Comcast bought a 51% stake in NBCUniversal in 2011. It was a bet that fusing the company's cable channels, which included Bravo and MSNBC, and its broadcast network, with Comcast's distribution pipes would make it a stronger company. Two years later, Comcast bought the rest of the company, a deal that gave it a foothold in streaming through Hulu.

The day the deal was announced, Roberts brought his father, then chairman emeritus, to the NBC Studio at 30 Rockefeller Center to meet with employees. In the early days as NBCU's new owner, the CEO also made a point to meet Lorne Michaels, the creator of storied comedy franchise "Saturday Night Live," which he had grown up watching.

"Compared to other people who were out there conquering, he was always incredibly caring and polite," Michaels said. At a private reception for the show's 50th anniversary at the Rainbow Room last year, Roberts presented Michaels with an antique watch made in 1975 with the SNL 50 logo painted on it.

Roberts has at times drawn criticism from President Trump, who in 2025 called the executive the "Lowlife Chairman of 'Concast,'" and has criticized MSNBC coverage. Still, Michaels said Roberts had granted the show creative license.

"We do a lot of politics and more now than in the past, but he trusts us, " Michaels said.

Roberts' appetite for more programming led to a hostile bid for most of 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets in 2018, kicking off an unsuccessful bidding war with Disney. Roberts beat out Disney to acquire U.K. pay-TV provider Sky.

To some, the CEO was at times too cautious. Comcast had a stake in Hulu with Disney but was late in starting its own streaming service.

"Streaming should have been a cable industry business," Malone said he has told Roberts. "Then Netflix stole the bone right out of our mouths."

Comcast launched Peacock into an already crowded field in 2020.

Missing out

Others say Roberts took his time to understand changing competitive dynamics without making rushed calls. He has taken an almost academic approach to studying digital disruption, meeting with everyone from Steve Jobs to executives at major newspapers.

"He is always looking around corners and thinking about where technology is headed," said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon.com, who talks to Roberts about their respective industries and personal matters. Roberts offers more give and take in negotiations than other executives and was directly involved in discussions about Comcast's cloud deal, Jassy said.

At times the cable scion has been left out of media deal talks. Roberts expressed frustration that Comcast wasn't approached when Warner sold to AT&T, according to people familiar with the situation.

A few years ago, when Disney and Warner came together to launch a joint sports streaming service, dubbed Venu, Roberts was upset that NBCUniversal didn't know anything about it, according to people familiar with the situation.

The joint venture never got off the ground, but Roberts was already making his own play to help Peacock gain scale. Comcast was in negotiations for what would become a $2.5 billion, 11-year deal to license the rights to broadcast NBA games, and Roberts got directly involved.

In recent years Peacock has struggled with profitability and has far fewer subscribers than many of its rivals. Comcast shed cable networks, spinning off channels including MSNBC, CNBC, USA and Syfy into Versant earlier this year.

And its connectivity business has lost domestic broadband customers for 12 consecutive quarters as cellphone carriers attract new customers with internet beamed over the air. Rivals Charter Communications and Cox Communications are merging to defend their core broadband businesses.

All this sharpened Roberts' belief that both pillars of the business needed the flexibility to forge their own paths unencumbered by the other.

"He does not see the world through rose colored glasses," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in an interview. "He is always willing to be direct about what's in front of him."

Write to Jessica Toonkel at jessica.toonkel@wsj.com