The Times business section leads with one of those stories that have been so often written about great media mergers: How did it happen, who whispered what to whom, who knew what when about the deal? In the past, these stories were breathless if not orgiastic. This one, about the Comcast-GE/NBC deal, is notably subdued.
Partly, this is because any business reporter could have written it in his or her sleep. It's the same hoary story: that panting dog, Jimmy Lee, the banker at JPMorgan Chase, getting the parties together at the Allen & Co. conference; the scene in Sun Valley; the grumpy, but somehow heroic, CEOs facing off like old bulls. Blah blah. And partly, it is because there have been so many media mergers before--mythical combinations of distribution and content, many of them concocted in Sun Valley and almost none of them have worked out--that, well, even business reporters have to show some amount of soberness and skepticism.
Not to mention embarrassment. Media mergers were--despite, over the years, the ever-mounting evidence against their probity and efficacy--glorified by the media itself. In some sense, that's why they happened: You couldn't be a media mogul without getting the media's attention for doing a media deal.
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