The abrupt end of Dick Ebersol‘s decades-long career at NBC may have been a signal to NBCUniversal executives, suggests Joe Flint in the Los Angeles Times‘ Company Town blog: “get with the program, or hit the road.”

Flint says Ebersol, whose long career as head of NBC Sports made him a giant, also put him in conflict with Comcast’s culture:

Although Comcast is no stranger to entertainment — it owns the cable network E!, which means it’s in business with the Kardashians — it prefers that the executives who run the company keep low profiles and let the work speak for itself.

Ebersol, who has been associated with NBC for almost 40 years and whose influence extended far beyond the world of sports, is anything but low profile. He was not shy about voicing his opinions on topics other than sports rights fees and Olympic ratings. He played a key role in persuading NBC brass that Conan O’Brien wasn’t going to work out as Jay Leno’s successor, and he enjoyed very friendly relationships with much of the media.

Reuters reports that “Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and John Malone‘s Liberty Media are interested in NBC Universal, according to a report by CNBC, citing sources,” although they add that analysts see News Corp. as a less likely bidder due to antitrust concerns. Well, clearly. But how genuine is their interest?

The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman, who has largely stuck to her story that Comcast is the only relevant bidder for NBC Uni despite strong criticism from some quarters of the Internet (i.e. Nikki Finke), was immediately dismissive of the rumors: “Nobody I know believes the latest round of sniffing around the edges of NBC-Universal by NewsCorp or Liberty Media,” she wrote, adding (Finke is sure to love this) that “What I am hearing from inside and around the deal is that indeed the Comcast deal to buy 51 percent of NBC-Universal is done in principle, but it will be several more weeks before anything official is announced.”

The LA Times‘s Joe Flint provides a helpful, insidery account of what could be going on:

For starters, when a company like General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal is in play, everyone comes by to take a peak [sic] inside. It’d be foolish not to do that. It’s like having an open house in your neighborhood. Don’t you want to see how your neighbor has the kitchen set up? That doesn’t mean they are all interested in buying the thing, of course.

[...]And if you are wondering why News Corp. doesn’t come out and just say it is not interested in NBC Universal (we won’t even get into the regulatory hurdles such a deal would face), it’s because if a company starts to comment on one thing, it will soon have to comment on everything — so it’s just easier not to comment, period.

So Murdoch can potentially get some free intelligence out of this, acting as an interested bidder. NBC and GE, for their part, add a layer to their smokescreen, allowing them to make their decision in peace. But based on available information, it sounds like the mother of all TV mergers — the logo of which might involve a terrifying fox/peacock hybrid, or possibly searchlights that morph into feathers — probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon.