Ben Berkowitz is the business news editor at AOL. His weekly column highlights business stories with significant implications that were overlooked at first glance.

The story you didn't read this week but probably should have was actually two stories you may have read lately: Bob Wright's "exit interview" in Fortune and Friday's front-page Journal story on AT&T (NYSE:T) and Yahoo(NASDAQ:YHOO) renegotiating their deal. The interesting thing in both these stories is the almost off-handed way in which they disclose how close two major conglomerates came to being bought and sold.

The AT&T - Yahoo piece, almost as an afterthought, mentions that in 2004 AT&T and Yahoo actually jointly hired bankers to make a run at buying Disney(NYSE:DIS). (This was in response to Comcast trying to buy Disney and a suspicion that even Microsoft might make an offer too).

Think about that for a second. AT&T and Yahoo buying Disney. It's almost too incongruous to believe. But anyone who knows anything about AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre knows he likes buying stuff. A lot. And some sort of Yahoo-Disney tie-up is a very old rumor. (Yahoo CEO Terry Semel ran Warner Bros. after all, so he knows old media).

(Full disclosure: About 10 years ago I accepted a job offer from SBC, but changed my mind a few weeks later and never actually worked there).

Meanwhile, before handing over the reins at NBC Universal, Bob Wright sat down with Fortune to talk about his tenure at the media company and where he thinks GE(NYSE:GE) might take it. Like a good reporter would, Fortune's Tim Arango asks Wright if GE ever actually got close to selling NBC. Surprisingly enough, Wright says yes, yes it did, and then gives details!

Apparently in 1993 GE sold NBC to Gulf + Western (former owner of Paramount), and then in 1994 it sold half of NBC to Disney. Both deals collapsed. But considering how adamant GE has always been about not selling NBC, it's surprising to hear that the company spent the better part of two years trying to do that very thing.

It makes sense though. Think back to the early 1990s for a second. In the 1992-1993 season, NBC only had two shows in the top 20, "Cheers" and "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Not particularly impressive and not a good sign for revenue. It was not much better in the '93-'94 season with three top-20 shows ( "Seinfeld," "Fraser" and "Wings"). But by 1994-'95 things had turned around, with six top-20 shows, including the top two on television, "Seinfeld" and "ER."

It's always interesting to hear these sorts of things, even years later. Makes you wonder how close any given conglomerate is to being sold at any given moment. If AT&T and Yahoo were seriously considering buying Disney, then who else was/is for sale? Verizon-Viacom maybe? News Corp.-DirecTV? (Oh wait, nevermind. Tried it, didn't work out too well).

In other words, don't necessarily believe GE when it says that it will never sell NBC - it's been saying that for 20 years but clearly it has tried in past and could again. And if AT&T ever says it's not shopping for something, well, fool me 16 times, shame on you, but fool me 17 times, shame on me.