The cable company Comcast announced Monday its plans to spin off its media business, NBCUniversal, into a separate, publicly-traded company. Comcast will keep the connectivity business, including broadband and wireless services. NBCUniversal will keep the media business, including the film and TV studios, the streaming service Peacock, and the Universal theme parks. The split is expected to be complete in about one year, and comes during a time of change in the media industry. When Comcast bought NBCUniversal back in 2011, it was a very different media landscape.“The synergies that made sense 15 years ago are less and less apparent,” said Roger Entner, analyst and founder with Recon Analytics, which counts Comcast as a customer.He said since then, streaming has become a thing; satellite internet is more of a thing; and content creators, now, are definitely a thing. All of those create challenges for Comcast.“The attention that they deserve makes it much easier if there are two companies than one,” he said.Entner said Comcast and NBC have always, culturally, been pretty different, and will be more at home in separate houses. A cable company, he said, is by definition risk-averse because it has to help people get and stay online.“Whereas when it comes to content, this is all about not being boring, not being cautious, because that’s the worst content you can watch on television,” he said.This is not Comcast’s first attempt to divide and conquer. It previously spun off cable networks including MSNBC and CNBC. One potential motivation for all this?“It’s a ‘for sale’ sign,” said Charles Schreger, a former HBO executive who is now an adjunct professor at both New York University and Fordham University.He said it’s tough to sell an entertainment company wrapped inside a cable company. No other business wants to eat something that big. “There’s too many things that they don’t want,” Schreger said. “But would they be interested in buying a library?”A library of movies and television shows, with a streaming service as the cherry on top? That, he said, is a lot more digestible.