US cable TV giant Comcast has agreed to buy rival Time Warner Cable in a $45.2bn (£25.5bn) deal that unites the country's two biggest cable TV operators and will control more than a third of the market.BULLSHIT!
Comcast, which owns the NBC broadcast network and the Universal film studio, offered $158.82-a-share to take over Time Warner Cable (TWC), which owns movie channel HBO and Time Magazine.
Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, said consumers would benefit from the "really special transaction", adding that he was "optimistic" that regulators would allow it.
Speaking to CNBC, Roberts added: "The deal is pro-competitive, it's pro-consumer. We going to be able to bring better products, faster internet, more channels, on demand TV everywhere, on a national local platform that's really special," he claimed.
Very large companies, companies that dominate the market or are outright monopolistic, are never, ever "pro-consumer". They are anything but. They are pro-themselves and to those guys, the consumer is nothing more than a sheep to be sheared.
They almost can't help themselves. They know that their
Which is a long-winded way of saying that if you have Comcast or Time-Warner, you're probably going to get screwed even worse than you are now. Place a service call and you'll be asked "a service tech can be there between the hours of 6AM and 10PM in July, will someone be home, then?"
Large companies are never pro-consumer. That's just the way it is. There is nothing good in this merger for anyone at the output end of the coax cable.
4 comments:
Yep, we're screwed... And not going to get kissed either!!! dammit
And, of course, costs will have to be cut to justify the merger. Which means that thousands of people are going to be fired.
(But not the top brass, of course. They'll "retire" with platinum parachutes.)
The two do not compete anywhere, unlike T-Mobile and AT&T they do not serve any markets in common, so it's probable this will make it past anti-trust. They're already monopolies in the markets they serve, after all. Both were already reaming their customers with shoddy service at a high cost. I expect that to continue. Sigh.
The merger might – a slim chance, but might – get blocked on the basis of the cable trust negotiating down rates the networks and other on-air broadcasters get paid for the use of their stuff.
Or individual cities might insist that under-street cable lines get shared by upstart competitors.
Or we can all go into the bathroom and shoot ourselves.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank
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