Unlike its rivals, NBCUniversal long ago he developed a healthy fear of zombies.

Not the squirming, brain-eating undead kind, but rather the media variety: the “undead” cable networks that long ago gave up any hope of cultivating round-the-clock audiences and instead run only a few hours of original programming, interspersed with seemingly endless reruns of TV favorites like “Ridiculous” (MTV); “Fear Factor” (HLN); or “Seinfeld” (Comedy Central).

Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, two of the largest owners of these cable network spectrums, didn’t have much to show for keeping them in the running. Indeed, Warner revealed in August a massive $9.1 billion cut of its TV assetsciting business headwinds as well as the projected loss of its lucrative deal with the NBA to air games on its cable networks. Paramount Global followed suit, revealing an impairment charge of $5.98 billion as it prepared for its acquisition by Skydance Media.

NBCU has yet to disclose a write-down, and one reason is that the company has been shuttering underperforming cable networks with little sentimental attachment to them for years. “There are too many channels,” former NBCU CEO Steve Burke said in 2016 after the company dropped Style and G4. Also gone: Esquire, Cloo and Chiller. In 2021, NBCU raised eyebrows by announcing plans to close NBCSN – a sports network! Theory: Sports broadcasts would bolster broadcast network NBC, US cable channel and streaming service Peacock (Narrator: “They have.”)

Now, Comcastparent of NBCU, will consider a possible spin-off of its cable portfolio, the company disclosed Thursday during a call with investors. The idea, Comcast Chairman Mike Cavanagh said, is to consider what the effects of such a deal might be before making a decision. “‘There may be some smart things to do, and we want to study that,'” he said. The news almost immediately sparked speculation that Warner Bros. Discovery or Skydance may want to acquire such assets, although Cavanagh stressed that the intention – if a decision is made – would be to give the new company to shareholders.

“Investors have been yearning for exactly this, or at least something close to it, for years,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson. Such a deal would decouple Peacock and NBCU’s sports properties from cable’s economic erosion.

It’s no secret that standalone cable networks have become complex but toxic assets in the modern media landscape. They continue to generate millions in advertising and distribution revenue, but they need millions spent on content to maintain their ratings just as many of their viewers are switching to streaming services. Disney’s FX, for example, has long been known for offering original dramas and series, which it distributed one episode per week at certain times of the year, which often coincided with the needs of its producers. Now, most people think of “The Bear,” a current FX favorite, as something more related to Hulu, the Walt Disney Co.-owned streaming service.

The current properties of NBCU cables do not go to their maximum. The Universal Kids network never scaled the heights the company had planned for at the time acquired DreamWorks Animation for $3.89 billion. Indeed, NBCU would have been better off keeping the outlet under its former name, Sprout, when it was designed to appeal to preschoolers and their parents. Oxygen, once a network backed by Geraldine Laybourne and Oprah Winfrey and built to appeal to female audiences, is more or less a true-crime outlet where rivals have a stronger perch.

But there are still some good deals to be found. MSNBC and CNBC have painful ratings, and the US, while no longer known as the home of blue-sky dramas like “Burn Notice” or “White Collar,” still brings in sizable crowds with sports and the return of “WWE SmackDown.” Bravo has cultivated a fan club of people who want to pick up every detail of every edition of “Real Housewives” on the show.

Comcast may wonder if it can avoid some of the challenges Disney has faced. Charter Communications received notice for its more recent negotiations with the company, in which Disney agreed to make Disney+ and ESPN+ available to some of its distributor’s subscribers while giving Charter the freedom to cable properties such as Freeform, Disney Junior and Disney XD.

Spinning the cable would raise some pretty thorny issues. Could NBCU’s news operations still thrive if MSNBC and CNBC were separated from NBC News’ newsgathering machine? Doesn’t cable revenue provide valuable dollars for actual reporting? And do the cable and satellite operators have any offer to guarantee that a certain number of sports continue to appear in the US?

Cable undercut Paramount and Warner. NBCUniversal may still be able to extract a new benefit from the medium if executives play their hand properly. Comcast and NBCUniversal have the luxury of being able to look into such things because, unlike their competitors, they haven’t blown past the graveyard.