Comcast's hostile bid for Disney marks the most audacious move yet for Brian Roberts, the cable operator's president.
Mr Roberts is already on a high. Institutional Investor magazine last month named him as America's best chief executive officer, the man who successfully guided Comcast to its successful $47bn (£25.1bn) takeover for AT&T broadband in 2001. That deal made Comcast the largest broadband provider in the US.
That deal was a coup for the ultracompetitive Mr Roberts, a keen squash player who has made it his mission to transform Comcast into a media giant along the lines of Viacom or News Corporation.
Mr Roberts' ambition is to make a reality of Comcast - the name is an amalgam of the words "communication" and "broadcast". He wants to dominate both, through the 22 million cable subscribers the new AT&T Comcast serves, plus media holdings such as shopping channel QVC and, of course, with broadband. Should he tuck Disney under in his belt, Comcast would become a media giant.
Mr Roberts is a case of nepotism come good, having worked at Comcast - founded by his father Ralph 20 years ago - since 1981. He worked first as a local station controller in Trenton, New Jersey, then as an assistant general manager in Flint, Michigan. In 1990, when he was 30, his father appointed him president.
He has hardly put a foot wrong. In 1999 he walked away from a deal to buy another cable operator, MediaOne, when AT&T bid up the price, retreating with a $1.5bn consolation fee and 2 million AT&T subscribers. Just two years later, he picked up the remainder of the subscribers - at a much-reduced price - when he won control of AT&T's cable operations.
These are heady times for Comcast, which started out as regional cable operator with just 1,200 TV subscribers in Tupelo, Mississippi. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Comcast serves more than 21 million US customers and has a major presence in 17 of the top 20 largest metropolitan areas.
Mr Roberts' timing in swooping on Disney is impeccable as Michael Eisner, Disney's chairman and chief executive, is coming under intense pressure from shareholders, in particular Roy Disney, who resigned from the board two months ago.
Disney's share price is at lows not seen since 1996, and the much ballyhooed merger with ABC, the television network, has failed to live up to expectations. In the most recent setback for Mr Eisner, Pixar, the computer and animation company, declined to renew a distribution deal with Disney. Pixar contributed significantly to the success of Disney's film arm with hits such as Finding Nemo and Toy Story.
"This would certainly resolve the Michael Eisner succession issue, which is the biggest stumbling block facing the company and a large part of the reason that the stock has been underperforming the last five years," Barry Ritholtz, the chief market strategist at the Maxim Group, told Reuters.
Even if Mr Roberts pulls off this bid, making it work will be a difficult proposition. The marriage of distribution and content is the golden grail of the media world, but several companies have come a cropper. The Time Warner/AOL blockbuster merger proved to be a dud and Disney itself failed to realise the potential of marrying its content to the distribution network of ABC TV.
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