Can Comcast Be As Mighty As Google?

FOR ALL OF BURKE’S SUCCESS, there is one element of this moment that stings badly: His father, Dan, who taught him the difference between a ratings point and a share, who served as his best man, died in October, at 82, of complications from diabetes. According to Burke’s brothers,­ Dan Burke had been “very ill,” suffering from dementia so advanced that he was unaware Steve had become the CEO of NBCUni.

Burke refuses to talk about the subject to the media. He understands that a well-meaning reporter could wring great poignancy from the tale. But he doesn’t want to receive the benefit of others’ sympathy when his father was the one who suffered. And so it is a story he prefers to keep in the background as he settles into his life in New York.

Burke, the marathoner, still runs. But in Manhattan he has begun a rigorous practice of kayaking, even buying himself a 23-foot-long, 22-inch-wide boat. In the Hudson, hard by ferries and tugboats plowing through the water, Burke’s ­kayak pitches like a plastic bath toy. Keeping it from flipping over requires incredible balance and core strength, yet this challenging new hobby has suggested to Burke a new fitness goal: He intends to paddle his tippy kayak more than 25 miles, around the entire island of Manhattan.

This new goal, and this image of him circling the media center he intends to conquer, may suggest that Burke is every inch a New Yorker now. But he has taken to describing the structure of his new life in a particular and telling way: My job is in New York, he tells people. My home is in Philadelphia.

There are layers to this description: Burke and his wife Gretchen raised their five children in Haverford, and now live on one of the most beautiful streets in Center City. That will always be home. But he has other roots in Philly, too, like Comcast, and his deep and abiding friendship with his boss, Brian Roberts. Burke’s most vital link to Philly, however, might prove to be Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Burke has served on the board at CHOP for 12 years, chairing it for three. Early on in his tenure, there was a drop in the hospital’s patient volume and revenue. Burke counseled a concerned CEO, Steve Altschuler, not to waver in his plans. “He said, ‘Don’t worry about this. Blips like these occur,’” says Altschuler. “He said, ‘Just keep going and I’ll help manage the board.’”

Burke’s understanding of big business enabled him to support the enterprise through the complexities of debt financing, invaluable as the nonprofit CHOP undertook expansion plans topping $2 billion. But there was more to Burke’s participation than that, says Altschuler. Burke struck him as a guy who wasn’t “giving back” just because it was expected.

The CHOP board makes a practice of inviting a hospital doctor in to speak at every meeting. And Burke was commonly blown away by these visitors: a doctor fighting to eliminate blindness; an oncologist treating childhood cancer; a plastic surgeon working to make children whole again. “All I do is sell cable,” he told Altschuler. “You guys—you save lives.” After Burke resigned as CHOP’s chairman, he also said something else: “‘Maybe,’”­ Altschuler recalls him proposing, “‘after I finish with NBCUni, I’ll come back here and run CHOP. That would be a great way to end my career.’”

Of course, Burke was born to the broadcast business. And he currently serves on the boards of JPMorgan and Berkshire-Hathaway, where Warren Buffett acknowledges­ Burke is a candidate to replace him. His options abound. But Altschuler is adamant about Burke’s emotional tie to the hospital. “He meant it,” he says. “The idea of it really moved him, and I believe he might do it.”

Those closest to Burke see the wisdom in it. In fact, Brian Roberts seems moved by the idea, too. Normally a bit shy, Roberts is known among journalists for speaking quietly and delivering his thoughts in long, digressive sentences. But at the prospect of Burke returning to Philadelphia to work at CHOP, he looks down at the floor, settles into a soft, admiring smile, and delivers an immediate answer: “I haven’t heard this,” he says. “But I’m not at all surprised that Steve would be thinking in terms of creating a legacy that is not just about business, but is also about accomplishing something with greater meaning.”

It would be an unexpected turn to Burke’s life story—if refashioning a cable company into an icon of American industry, if holding his childhood dream job, prove not to be enough. But the solution to this puzzle is that there is no puzzle at all: Steve Burke just lives his life according to his own management techniques. From the pictures he hung at 30 Rock to his musings about taking one final job, he casts not just his employees but himself into larger stories—stories of fathers and sons and legacies and institutions. It should come as no surprise, then, that he is already looking so far ahead. It is of fundamental importance to a storyteller to know just how his story should end.