Memo to NBC Universal staffers: Grab as many light bulbs and kitchen appliances as you can — today marks the beginning of the end of life as a General Electric employee.

The day GE shareholders have been anticipating for years has finally arrived, with the industrial giant expected to unveil its deal to sell NBCU to Comcast today, according to a source close to the situation, after reaching an agreement earlier this week to buy out Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBCU for $5.8 billion.

Terms of the deal call for GE to spin out NBCU into a separate company that will be combined with Comcast’s cable networks. Brian Roberts-led Comcast will own 51 percent of the new entity, while GE will initially hold a 49 percent stake that it can sell back to the cable giant in two parts starting 3½ and seven years after the deal closes.

The combined company will be valued at roughly $37 billion, broken out into a $30 billion valuation for NBCU’s assets, which include Universal Studios and cable channels such as Bravo, and a $7 billion price tag for Comcast’s assets, which include the Style and Versus cable networks. Comcast also will infuse the new entity with between $6 billion and $7 billion in cash depending on NBCU’s financial performance.

The deal will be the media sector’s largest this year and harkens back to a business model that relies on combining content and distribution — a concept that has been virtually abandoned by Comcast’s media brethren.

Indeed, most big media companies in past years dismantled empires based on synergy, most notably Time Warner and Viacom — both of which Comcast-NBCU will overshadow in revenue after the deal closes.

But Comcast thinks owning content will both help it diversify and protect its core cable-system business from the threats posed by new distribution sources and changing viewer habits.