DEAL COULD MAKE NBC A POWERHOUSE.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

If General Electric finalizes a deal to merge its NBC Television Network with Vivendi Universal's entertainment assets, NBC could become a West Coast media powerhouse on par with neighbors Warner Bros., The Walt Disney Co. and others, experts said Tuesday.

NBC, which has headquarters in Burbank and New York, would assume control over such local Vivendi properties as Universal Films and the Universal Studios theme park in nearby Universal City.

``If the deal goes through, it does create a vertically integrated company similar to the scale of Time-Warner that essentially does bring more aggregated clout,'' said George Geis, dean of the executive MBA program at UCLA's Anderson School. ``We will have a company here that is gigantic and large, and Universal will be owned by a company that understands media and entertainment.''

NBC's local stature would be sure to grow with the added heft of the Universal assets.

Burbank-based Disney already not only has a movie studio and two theme parks in Southern California, it owns the ABC television network as well as the ABC Family and ESPN cable networks. AOL Time Warner's West Coast media assets include the Burbank-based Warner Bros. film studio as well as the WB television network.

Meanwhile, New York-based Viacom owns CBS, UPN and Paramount Pictures as well as cable properties MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and others, and New York-based News Corp.'s local holdings include the 20th Century Fox movie studio and the Fox television network in addition to cable properties such as the FX channel and Fox Sports Net.

``All these other media conglomerates have a number of businesses in media and entertainment, but NBC was pretty much just a one-trick pony,'' said David Joyce, a media analyst with Guzman and Associates. ``I think this is a capstone deal for NBC, something that can really bring them up to the level of their peers ABC, Fox, CBS and AOL Time Warner.''

While a final deal is still far from complete, it's not yet known how the merger would impact the day-to-day running of the different entertainment assets or how executives and other employees would be affected.

``Anytime you have a new owner, you are going to be seeing careful review and scrutiny, but I think the predominant feeling (at Universal) will be, We finally have some stability,'' said Geis. ``With all the worry and potential uncertainty associated with Vivendi, to have someone in control and very stable as GE would in general be viewed as a positive move.''

The Vivendi entertainment assets also include the USA and Sci-Fi cable channels. NBC's current media assets include the Telemundo Spanish-language network, the Bravo cable channel as well as the MSNBC and CNBC cable networks.

``Having the Universal Studios film library under their umbrella could lead to them creating a premium channel, like Showtime owned by Viacom and HBO and Cinemax owned by AOL Time Warner,'' Joyce said. ``It shows the kind of growth that NBC can do with the new platform.''

Greg Hernandez, [phone]

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com