Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit, Every Goddamned Time." -- The Ghoul

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck,
"FOFF" = Felonious Old Fat Fuck,
"COFF" = Convicted Old Felonious Fool,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset,
A/K/A P01135809, A/K/A Dementia Donnie, A/K/A Felon^34,
A/K/A Dolt-45, A/K/A Don Snoreleone

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Coming Soon to Your Cable Network: Lousy Service, Fewer Choices and Higher Bills; Comcast Edition

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.

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.
BULLSHIT!

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 victims customer base has no meaningful choice. That attitude percolates throughout the company. Not for nothing that Ma Bell was once satirized as having this motto: "AT&T. We don't care. We don't have to." Microsoft, well, if there ever was a tech company that cared less about consumers, I'd like to know who they were. Microsoft used to force computer makers to pay Microsoft a fee for every computer they made, even if Windows wasn't installed on it-- an abuse of monopoly power unseen since the days of Standard Oil. Back when railroads were the only game in town, if you had only one railroad serving your town, the freight and passenger rates were at the level of extortion.

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:

Old NFO said...

Yep, we're screwed... And not going to get kissed either!!! dammit

Comrade Misfit said...

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.)

BadTux said...

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 New York Crank said...

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