The deal is really nothing particularly unusual — an Internet video streaming service adding old shows to its lineup. Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), Hulu and many other streaming services do this all the time. About a month ago Amazon said it would let viewers help it choose the first of its original productions to add to the Prime service.

That was mildly interesting, but just a page from Netflix’s book. Somehow or other, the video streaming companies are going to have to shake loose new programming from the established media firms like Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) and others. Original programming like Netflix’s “House of Cards” proved to be a huge success, according to the company, and that is what drove Amazon to jump into the fray.

Of course all of these have to compete with Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube, which is far and away the leading provider of video content. That is because most of YouTube’s videos are made by amateurs and the videos are free. If — and it is a big “if” — YouTube can get viewers to pay for the various channels it has begun to offer, Google could end up putting a huge dent in revenues and profits at Netflix, Amazon Prime and others.

The company attributed the decline in revenues to its Blockbuster segment, as if anyone expected that to be a winner. The big drop in profit was caused by higher programming and subscriber acquisition costs. Even excluding a $99 million one-time gain in the first quarter of last year, Dish came up about $30 million lower in operating income this year.

The company’s CEO said:

Broadband sales are encouraging, especially given that almost all of our dishNET™customers have bundled with our pay-TV service.

New pay-TV subscriber additions were lower, but net subscriber numbers rose by about 36,000 in the first quarter. Dish’s subscriber count of 14.09 million is about 20,000 more than at the end of the same period a year ago.

The company added 66,000 broadband customers in the first quarter, compared to just 6,000 a year ago. This is where the company is looking for growth and why it has made bids for both Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S). Expect Dish to chase Clearwire with renewed gusto if it loses out on Sprint.

Dish shares are trading down about 1.4% in the premarket this morning to $39.04. The stock’s 52-week range is $26.12 to $40.95, and that high was posted yesterday. The consensus target price for the shares was around $40.75 before today’s report.

Ergen said, “We’re not going to lose because we’ve got a better offer on the table.” Dish’s offer for Sprint is $7.10 in cash per share, along with a 32% ownership stake for Sprint shareholders in the combined company, tops Softbank’s cash offer of $6.38 a share and a 30% stake in Sprint.

Softbank has said that it will not improve its offer, but that was then. Ergen appears to expect a sweetened offer for Sprint from Softbank, and indicated yesterday that Dish would have to seek a private equity partner if Softbank put in a bid of $7.50 or $8.00 a share.

Ergen also made it very clear about what is important to Dish: the spectrum owned by Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR), a company controlled by Sprint and for which the wireless carrier already has offered to buy the rest of the company. Dish has tried before to acquire spectrum from Clearwire, only to be rebuffed. Now the gloves are off.

Ergen’s strategy — if he can acquire Sprint/Clearwire — is to leverage Dish’s satellite network with a terrestrial wireless network that would allow subscribers to get mobile wireless service as part of a single package. Verizon Wireless — still a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone Group PLC (NASDAQ: VOD) — and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) both seek the same thing, but neither has the content licenses that Dish already has in place with the media companies.

That is a huge part of Ergen’s play here. Dish would be transformed virtually overnight into the only U.S. provider of a single, all-inclusive wireless-pay TV package that would allow customers seamless access to media content both inside and outside their homes.

Suddenly, Dish is a threat to what is essentially a duopoly at the top of the wireless industry in the United States. The FCC would be hard-pressed to deny a merger that promises to increase competition for consumers.

It is still early days, but the fight for Sprint/Clearwire has all the earmarks of being a good one for Sprint shareholders. Shares are trading now at $7.12, slightly above Dish’s cash offer of $7.10. If Softbank makes a higher bid, shares will shoot up on the expectation that Dish will top the offer.

Ergen has as much as said that Dish Network’s future depends on its acquisition of Sprint/Clearwire. Certainly Dish’s growth prospects are dim without a transformative deal like this, and there are no other deals out there like this one. For Dish, it is grow or die.

On a GAAP basis, Comcast’s EPS totaled $0.51, excluding one-time $0.03 per share gain on the sale of wireless spectrum licenses.

Comcast did not offer any guidance information, but the consensus estimates call for second-quarter EPS of $0.62 on revenue of $15.99 billion. The current full-year estimate calls for EPS of $2.38 on revenue of $68.04 billion.

The company’s CEO noted:

Cable’s results highlight revenue growth in every product, led by Video and High-Speed Internet, and overall customer growth, as we continue to effectively balance financial and customer performance. NBCUniversal’s businesses also generated strong first quarter performance, led by Film and Cable Networks.

Total revenue from NBCUniversal was down 2.4% year-over-year to $5.34 billion. Most of the decline was due to an 18.5% drop in the broadcast television segment. Revenue at the company’s theme parks rose 12.2% year-over-year.

Comcast lost 60,000 cable subscribers in the quarter, but added 433,000 high-speed Internet subscribers. Both numbers are slightly worse than subscriber turnover in the same period a year ago.

Average monthly revenue per video customer rose 8.1% to $155.05 in the quarter. Comcast claims nearly 22 million video customers, down from 22.3 million in the same period a year ago, and nearly 20 million high-speed Internet customers, up from 18.6 million a year ago.

Comcast’s shares are up 1.7% in premarket trading, at $42.01, in a 52-week range of $28.09 to $42.61. The consensus target price for the shares was around $46.75 before today’s report.

Bloomberg cites unnamed sources who say that the deals would allow Twitter to stream the videos and split the advertising revenues with the media companies. One or more of the partnerships could be active by mid-May one source told Bloomberg.

Twitter introduced its Vine video-sharing app in January, which allows users to post and share short (six second) videos on its site. Vine was an instant hit, but it did not drive any added revenue to the company.

According to research cited by Bloomberg, a third of active Twitter users share a post about something they have seen on TV. Giving its users some additional incentive to view video clips and spend more time on the site and view more ads are all pluses for Twitter. For the media companies, greater exposure for their programming could drum up more advertising dollars, something that they need to fight back against the inroads that online streaming have made into their traditional distribution mechanisms of broadcast and pay TV.

In addition to the threat from Aereo, broadcasters and cable channels are raging at Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH) and its Hopper DVR that allows subscribers to record a program and then replay it without advertising.

That may be a lose-lose situation though, because there are still more than 11 million households in the U.S. that still receive broadcast signals. Going cable-only would force these households either to pay for a subscription to Fox or find some other channel to watch. The other broadcast networks, CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), ABC, owned by The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), and NBC, owned by Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) face the same threat and may end up as cable-only channels as well.

News Corp.’s COO told Bloomberg:

We need to be able to be fairly compensated for our content. This is not an ideal path we look to pursue, but we can’t sit idly by and let an entity steal our signal. We will move to a subscription model if that’s our only recourse.

CBS has already threatened to pull its programming from Dish’s satellite system in response to the Hopper ad-skipping device. So far, Dish hasn’t blinked, but if CBS gets serious, Dish may have to back down or its 14 million subscribers will lose NFL football and other popular programming.

Aereo doesn’t face the same threat. The broadcasters will surely appeal the court decisions against them, all the way to the Supreme Court. If they lose there, then the switch to a cable-only network may be their only choice.

One thing remains certain: there are serious changes in the making with some serious money at stake.

In a July ruling, a district court judge denied the broadcasters request for an injunction to stop Aereo from offering its service. Today’s ruling denied the broadcasters’ appeal of that ruling.

Aereo, currently only available in New York City, makes an miniature antenna that captures over-the-air broadcast TV signals and then sells subscriptions to those signals via streaming over an Internet connection. In the original ruling, the judge stated that the Aereo device is virtually the same as a DVR, a device that was declared legal several years ago because its retransmission of programming is made to a single subscriber and is not a performance aimed at the general public. As such, the device does not violate copyright law.

There is too much at stake here for this to be the last word, but the situation does not look good for the broadcasters.

Verizon and Amazon are taking different approaches to the issue of content. Verizon wants to pay for content based on viewership, an approach that has never appealed to content providers like the broadcast networks or the cable channels or the movie studios. The content providers, like The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), which owns ABC and ESPN, and CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) have resisted any attempt to split up their offerings in any way.

Amazon, following the path set out by Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), will produce 11 pilot programs of its own for its Amazon Prime viewers. The company plans to broadcast all the pilots and produce further installments of those that pull viewers.

Diller and IAC, through an investment in a small company called Aereo, is using a scheme that really outrages content providers. Aereo makes a small antenna that it uses to capture broadcast signals and then converts the signal to a stream than can be delivered over the Internet to any connected device. So far the system has only been tested in New York City, but Aereo is about to roll out the service in 22 cities. Aereo won a court battle last summer preventing an injunction against its plan, but the case has been appealed. This may be the biggest threat of all to the broadcast networks.

With assaults on the existing model of pay TV coming from every direction, about the only thing the content providers can do is resist on all fronts. Eventually, though, that strategy will cost the media firms viewers as consumers find their entertainment somewhere else.

Consumers are no longer willing simply to put up and shut up. They want access to TV shows, movies, music, and other content at the time and on the device of their choosing. The top-down model the networks and media companies like is eroding and they won’t be able to beat back every assault that’s coming.

Cablevision made this comment about yesterday’s filing:

The manner in which Viacom sells its programming is illegal, anti-consumer, and wrong. Viacom effectively forces Cablevision’s customers to pay for and receive little-watched channels in order to get the channels they actually want. Viacom’s abuse of its market power is not only illegal, but also prevents Cablevision from delivering the programming that its customers want and that competes with Viacom’s less popular channels.

Viacom may only be a stalking horse for the rest of the media industry that includes big names the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) and its Disney channels, ESPN channels, and ABC broadcast network; News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWSA), which owns the Fox broadcast network and other Fox channels; Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), which owns HBO, the Turner channels, and CNN; CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) which owns Showtime as well as its eponymous broadcast network; and Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) which now controls NBC.

The signal issue here is what’s called ‘tying’, a practice where programmers include that what Cablevision calls “less popular ancillary channels’ along with “must-have networks.” Cablevision cites Viacom’s must-have networks as Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and MTV, along with 14 of the ancillary channels that are forced on the cable operators.

Combined with other lawsuits and complaints about programmers’ bundling requirements, the current spate of actions against the programmers could result in some relief for consumers, who are currently paying an average of $90 a month for cable or satellite channels that many don’t want and don’t watch.

Today Credit Suisse Group A.G. (NYSE: CS) reiterated their Outperform rating on Comcast and raised their price target on the stock to $48. Comcast will pay General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) $16.7 billion for the remaining 49% stake of NBCU. While noting that the valuation is not cheap (~7x EV/EBITDA), they feel that Comcast has best in class cable operations and that a higher growth rate driven by NBCU warrants a premium. They are raising their 2013/2014/2015 earnings per share estimates to $2.51/$2.85/$3.28 (from $2.46/$2.73/$3.06) respectively.

The analysts at Credit Suisse point to two specific reasons for liking the deal. First by acquiring the balance of the company, they eliminate two companies having separate pools of cash dedicated to the company. This gives Comcast direct access to all the free cash flow generated by NBCU. Secondly, they are bullish on the prospects for NBCU, citing solid earnings growth and potential driven by improvement in the broadcast operations of the parent network and solid cable contributions from financial network CNBC.

One additional outstanding part of the buyout package is that the deal includes GE’s expanded commitment for future advertising, this is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings per share and could yield double-digit internal rates of return. Yet another reason for investors to like Comcast, which becomes a media giant with the completion of the purchase.

While the team at Credit Suisse points out that costs will increase for capital expenditures and programming, they are very positive on the current cable operations, a dividend increase and expectations for a $2 billion dollar repurchase of stock.

In the end this is a very positive deal for both parties involved. GE, which is also rated Outperform, takes in a tremendous amount of cash and divest themselves of a noncore asset at a good price. Credit Suisse also thinks the sale affirms that the enormous self-help potential at GE is starting to be realized, and this should drive share price outperformance. They raise their 2013/2014 earnings per share estimates to $1.69/1.89 (from $1.68/$1.86), moving up slightly due to higher industrial margins and from increased savings. They also raise their 2015 estimate to $2.02 (from $1.98) and move their price target on the stock to $25 from $24. Investors in GE also will be beneficiaries of an aggressive stock buyback plan.

The Comcast-GE deal is one in which both entities are able to strengthen and focus on their core business. In Comcast’s case, it adds media content to its vast cable delivery. General Electric can focus its cash and efforts on the industrial, technological and financial services areas of the company.