AdWeek reports that Comcast, which is purchasing the rest of NBC Universal, will begin using that company’s rules for advertising across its whole enterprise. And that includes a ban on firearms advertisements:

In a statement, Comcast said it decided this month it would adopt the advertising guidelines used by NBCUniversal, which will not accept ads for weapons or fireworks. (Last week, the cable giant announced it would acquire the 49 percent of NBCU it didn’t own for $16.7 billion.) NBC’s ad policy, last updated in June 2012, reads: “NBC does not accept advertisements for weapons or fireworks. Commercials that include weapons or fireworks as props will be approved on a case-by-case basis.” News of the policy change was reported by the local ABC affiliate in Flint, Mich. Williams Gun Sight Co. was outraged that its 30-second spot could no longer run on cable. A Comcast spokesperson didn’t know how long the NBC policy banning ads for firearms and weapons had been in place at NBC. “It’s a long-standing policy,” the spokesman said.

Voluntary restrictions on gun ads are relatively common in the wake of gun violence. In 1999, President Clinton asked representatives of the entertainment industry to eliminate advertising that included images of guns and gun violence. In 2003, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune decided it would only accept for ads that were antiques or collectibles after a man murdered his wife with a weapon that he purchased from the Guns & Rifles section of the classifieds. And this January, ESPN refused to renew an advertising contract with East Coast Guns on the grounds that its advertising criteria had changed to exclude ads that featured hand guns and ammunition for those weapons.

Comcast’s decision seems more likely to be the product of standardizing corporate practices as part of the acquisition than a direct response to the Newtown massacre. It would be a public relations problem for the company for a sales representative operating under one set of standards to accept an advertisement that local affiliates are unable to run. But it’s also probably a good call for the company given the current environment. I’ve said this before, but I think one of the most reasonable steps the entertainment industry could take in response to concerns about the impact of violent media would be to align the ratings of products that are being advertised with the ratings of the products they’re being advertised during. It would be labor-intensive to place ads that way. But making sure that viewers who have turned into general-interest or all-ages programming aren’t surprised by images of graphic violence would at least help consumers make viewing choices, even if it wouldn’t address the concerns of people who are worried about the desensitizing impacts of media violence.

In the wake of the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger, much of the attention’s been on low-rated NBC’s efforts to right itself. But yesterday, the company made two big announcements about very different parts of its future. First, fulfilling some of the terms of the deal, Comcast said it’ll launch four new channels, two aimed at African-Americans (including one backed by Magic Johnson) and two at Latinos. And, investing in the technological future of viewership, the company said it’s starting a video-on-demand service that will include legacy television shows and movies.

Given the massive success of Univision, and the fact that the best networks seem to be able to offer Latino audiences is either Rob Schneider’s bumbling through the family his character married into on Rob or Sofia Vergara as a transplanted bombshell, it makes sense that someone would try to go more aggressively after that rapidly growing market sector. It’s hard to tell what El Rey, the first of those two channels, will offer: “a mix of reality, scripted and animated series, movies, documentaries, news, music, comedy, and sports programming” isn’t exactly descriptive. But I do think it’s promising that the network’s saying out of the gate that they’ll hire Latino producers. You would think that would be a given for programming aimed at a Latino audience, but I don’t exactly take it for granted. And I think that “BabyFirst Americas,” which is a truly terrible network name, could actually find an audience in households where the first language is English. Bilingual education is going to be a lot more important in the future, and quality programming for children in Spanish could be a great educational tool for parents who want their kids growing up with multiple languages no matter which one they themselves speak.

I tend to think the African-American focused networks are a bit less significant, if only because the networks made a strategic decision to abandon black audiences a long time ago, and BET, TVOne, and VH1 have been trying to pick up that lost audience ever since. That said, I’m at least mildly interested to see what the folks behind REVOLT mean by this: “REVOLT will be live, like all great moments in television history. REVOLT will also be immediate, like today’s social networks,” because it’s so goofily futuristic. I’d be more compelled if the marketing material said something about building out mobile-friendly products, given the role that mobile plays in bridging the digital divide. But we’re a couple years out from seeing what they develop.

And speaking of digital, the bigger news for Comcast is probably the announcement that it’s building a Video on Demand service to challenge Netflix. They’re not just pulling in content from the NBCUniversal family, which makes it a somewhat more aggressive move than HBO and Showtime’s construction of separate, Netflix-like portals for their shows and movies. Those investments by individual channels could be interpreted as negotiating moves to show Netflix they’re willing to hold out, or attempts to preserve the sense that their content is ultra-premium. But Comcast seems like they’re trying to provide a genuine alternative, even if the content library they’re starting out with is relatively small. But given that Netflix is in the process of renegotiating contracts, and has had to pay higher fees to reup, there could be room for a company with a serious cash library to stock up fast. And a streaming or VOD service could provide an alternative way to keep alive low-rated but passionately-loved shows like Community that might not be earning their spot in a network lineup, but could draw subscribers to a streaming service.