COMMENT: Yes­ter­day, there was the sur­prise announce­ment that Kei­th Olber­mann was end­ing his show on MSNBC.  It’s offi­cial­ly being declared that this had noth­ing to do with the approval of Com­cast’s takeover by NBC Uni­ver­sal but that seems ques­tion­able giv­en that Com­cast’s lead­er’s are staunch GOP sup­port­ers.

Com­cast’s long-time rul­ing duo, Tom Mur­phy and Daniel Burke, are also long-time part­ners of Bill Casey’s old Cap­i­tal Cities inner-cir­cle (they were both part of Cap­i­tal Cities top man­age­ment from the late 60’s onward).

NB: Casey was one of the prin­ci­pals in the Cru­sade for Free­dom, the ille­gal domes­tic covert oper­a­tion that brought Nazis and East­ern Euro­pean fas­cists  into the Unit­ed States, where they coa­lesced into a major wing of the GOP. Casey was the man­ag­er of the 1980 Reagan/Bush (I) cam­paign and then became Rea­gan’s CIA direc­tor.

“Break­ing: Steve Burke to Become CEO of NBC Uni­ver­sal after Com­cast Deal Clos­es” by Chris Ariens; mediabistro.com; 9/26/2010.

EXCERPT: Stephen Burke will become chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of NBC Uni­ver­sal upon the close of Comcast’s acqui­si­tion of 51% of NBCU from GE, both com­pa­nies announced today. The news comes two days after cur­rent NBCU CEO Jeff Zuck­er, a life­time NBC employ­ee, announced he would be step­ping down once the deal clos­es.

Burke is COO of Com­cast and is past pres­i­dent of Com­cast Cable. But he has broad­cast TV in his blood. He’s the son of Daniel Burke, who along with Tom Mur­phy, ran Cap­i­tal Cities Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, an own­er of sev­er­al local TV sta­tions. Cap Cities acquired ABC TV, a com­pa­ny 10 times its size, for $3.5 bil­lion in 1985. Dis­ney bought ABC 10 years lat­er for $19 bil­lion. Inter­est­ing­ly, Com­cast made an unsuc­cess­ful $54 bil­lion bid for Dis­ney in 2004. . . .