Free Republic

Facing intense regulatory scrutiny, Comcast is planning to abandon its $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable, people briefed on the matter said on Thursday, ending a bid that would have united the country’s two largest cable operators and reshaped the rapidly evolving video and broadband markets. The collapse of the deal comes as technology changes and an array of Internet offerings upend how people watch and pay for television, making broadband service more important than ever. Had the deal been approved, the combined company would have controlled as much as 57 percent of the nation’s broadband market and just...

A Bloomberg report on Friday cast new doubts on Comcast's long-gestating bid to buy Time Warner Cable. The news wire, citing anonymous sources, reported that "staff attorneys at the Justice Department's antitrust division are nearing a recommendation to block" the bid. The attorneys "could submit their review as soon as next week," Bloomberg said. Then the department's leadership will decide whether to act on the recommendation. The Justice Department declined to comment, and so did the other government agency that is reviewing the proposed merger, the Federal Communications Commission.

Federal regulators overseeing Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable want to know if the cable giants put limits on companies’ streaming video options.In letters last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asked eight major programmers including Walt Disney Co., Viacom and CBS whether or not the companies placed any “restrictions or limitations” on their ability to distribute TV shows over the Internet. ADVERTISEMENT According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department — which is also charged with reviewing the $45 billion merger proposal — is doing its own investigation into whether the merger would hurt competition for online video. While the FCC has...

The National Association of African-American Owned Media alleges that Sharpton and other advocates have been bought off. Even though the FCC hasn't yet ruled on the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, one group has already filed a lawsuit claiming at least $20 billion in damages from the way the two giants allegedly discriminate against black-owned media. The complaint, filed in California on Friday, comes from the National Association of African-American Owned Media, which also filed a similar suit against AT&T and DirecTV in December. This time, the plaintiff is not only targeting both Comcast and TWC on...

Comcast and Time Warner Cable are spending more than $130,000 on a dinner to honor one of the federal regulators who will rule on their controversial merger plan, according to records of the companies’ contributions. The fundraising event for the Walter Kaitz Foundation will honor Federal Communications Commission panel member Mignon Clyburn as an advocate for diversity.

Cable providers rank worst in customer satisfaction According to the latest survey by American Customer Satisfaction Index, by far the biggest (and often most accurate) study in the country, cable providers Comcast and Time Warner Cable have the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of all companies . . . in all industries . . . in all of America. And that’s not even the bad news: Comcast and Time Warner Cable were the only two companies to score below a 60 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale. They’re lower than perennial customer satisfaction basement dwellers United Airlines, Bank of America, Sprint, Aetna...

As the person at Netflix responsible for content delivery, I spend a lot of time thinking about Netflix’s Open Connect CDN and its interconnection with ISPs. We are proud of the performance we’ve achieved through our hundreds of Open Connect partners around the globe. In fact, Netflix has a mutually beneficial relationship with nearly every ISP in every market where we provide service. But this is less the case for the largest ISP in the U.S., Comcast, which is trying to become even larger by acquiring Time Warner Cable. Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for direct interconnection to reverse an...

Like all mergers, the proposed $45.2 billion Comcast CMCSA +1.67% merger with Time Warner Cable TWC +1.3%—the largest and second largest cable providers in the nation—has its advocates and critics. There are certainly important questions about what impact the merger would have on consumers—but there are equally significant issues associated with the highly politicized approval process. The Obama Department of Justice, led by Eric Holder, must review the merger and decide whether to approve or block it. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and Justice Department have a long track record of pushing the rule of law aside and making decisions based...

Heavyweight conservatives and banterweight conservatives are lining up on both sides the Comcast/Time Warner merger. The heavyweights, which include Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform, Wayne Crews at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Duane Parde at the National Taxpayers Union, have penned a letter to influential Senators including Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley and Ted Cruz, urging them to look past the politics and approve the merger between the two cable giants on traditional grounds—you know, the grounds under which the anti-trust laws were written and passed in the first place? “As advocates for a free market,” the heavyweights write,...

Amid assurances from some republicans, conservatives, and libertarians in Washington that the $45 billion Comcast - Time Warner merger is nothing to fear, The Washington Free Beacon's Michael Continetti reveals the deep ties Comcast CEO Brian Roberts as well as Time Warner has with the Democratic Party:

Democratic members of Congress and the Obama administration have extensive ties to Comcast and Time-Warner, the two cable giants currently awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission on a $45 billion merger. One that has gone mostly overlooked: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D., Nev.) chief of staff, David Krone, is Comcast’s former senior vice president for corporate affairs. Krone moved from Comcast to Reid’s office in 2011 under ethically questionable circumstances,

Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’ executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for...

s Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. roll out a massive lobbying effort to win regulatory approval for the merger of the nation’s two largest cable companies, one key step for the companies will be garnering the support of prominent civil rights and minority groups. Comcast has already shown it can pull support from key minority groups — dozens sent letters of support to the Federal Communications Commission, which must approve the buyout, while it was considering Comcast’s last mega-deal — its 2011 purchase of NBC/Universal. As tax data analyzed as part of a collaboration between the Center for...

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, will buy Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion in stock, combining America's two biggest cable operators, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday. Under the deal expected to be announced Thursday morning, Time Warner Cable shareholders will receive $158.82 per share in stock for their shares, roughly $23 a share above where Time Warner has been trading, people familiar with the situation told the newspaper. The deal is expected to end a takeover battle for Time Warner by Charter Communications, the nation's fourth biggest cable operator, and its biggest shareholder, Liberty Media, The Journal...

Earlier today, Comcast Cable announced that it agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable in a $45 billion mega-deal. What's in it for Comcast Cable shareholders? "This combination creates a company that delivers maximum value for our shareholders," said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. How are they going to do that? The company explains in one sentence that probably has every Comcast and Time Warner Cable employee nervous. "The transaction will generate approximately $1.5 billion in operating efficiencies and will be accretive to Comcast’s free cash flow per share while preserving balance sheet strength." "Operating efficiencies" usually means the closing and combining...

Comcast will announce a deal to acquire Time Warner Cable in an all-stock deal worth more than $45 billion that will unite the biggest and second largest cable television operators in the country, according to people briefed on the matter. . The surprise merger — expected to be announced on Thursday — is likely to bring to an end a protracted takeover battle that a smaller cable rival, Charter Communications, has been waging for Time Warner Cable, and will be the second major deal for Comcast in recent years to radically reshape the American media landscape.