Today, I’m talking with Matt Strauss, who is now chairman of the NBCUniversal Media Group. This is Matt’s second time joining me on the show, and there’s been a whole lot of organizational and structural change at NBCU since the last time he and I spoke just two years ago — pure Decoder bait.

First, about a month after Matt was on the show, Comcast spun off most of the NBCU cable channels into something called Versant. That’s when Matt’s title changed from heading up just the direct-to-consumer offering — meaning Peacock, plus some other streaming services — to heading up the whole thing, across all distribution. And now, Comcast is spinning off the NBCU business entirely into a whole new standalone company.

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That’s a lot to have going on all at once! And meanwhile, it’s only just this year that Peacock became an actual profitable business at all — and it’s still pretty far away from being anything like the juggernaut that Netflix is.

But what NBCU has, and what Peacock has, that the rest of the streaming industry is still trying to wrap its head around, is live sports. Sports are huge. They held up the cable industry for years, they held up broadcast, and now they’re the big thing that could make streaming a winner for NBC.

One thing before we start: You’ll hear me ask Matt about the red company and the blue company.

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