GE bailout had nothing to do with NBC. GE is a massive company with most of the divisions unrelated. The bail out was to save the failure of GE's financial arm and had it not been bailed out NBC would have just continued to operate exactly the same.
With respect to the banks while I agree in theory -- I'm a libertarian -- this was a very unique situation. Almost a thousand banks have been allowed to fail but allowing the mega banks to fail would have devastated not only the people at fault but everyone. Look at the fallout from allowing Lehman to fail. That was a test balloon to see if it was a possibility and it clearly wasn't. We haven't even felt the true impact if Lehman yet. Wait until the trustee starts to liquidate Lehman's REIT and everyone's commercial property suddenly loses 20-30% of it's value.
Now if we want to do something so that this doesn't happen again then I can see that being an option. I don't like it -- again because it involves government intervention in free enterprise -- but the alternative is to allow financial institutions to get to the point where they are so rooted in everything that they can't be allowed to fail. I think regulation is the least bad option to prevent something like this going forward even though it is distasteful.