Synergy?

If there was an award for bungling corporate synergy, NBC-Universal (or whatever they call themselves nowadays) would be the clear front-runner today. Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live featured a hilarious send-up of the UK drama series Downton Abbey, which is itself produced by a company that’s owned by NBC-Universal. Not surprisingly, considering that Downton Abbey’s ratings on PBS rival those of many things NBC shows in prime-time, this sketch got a lot of attention. One of the venues for this attention was the web-site of NBC’s Today Show, which also included a video clip of that sketch. Or, at least it did earlier today.

As of this writing, if you attempt to play the clip, you get a message explaining that the clip is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC. Yes, that’s right a video that features an excerpt from an NBC show that utilizes footage from another NBC show has now been removed from an NBC-owned web-site due to a copyright claim by NBC. I couldn't tell you what the leading book on the topic of corporate synergy is, but I’m confident that this approach is not in it, except perhaps as a warning.