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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.

Excerpted from "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past. It’s not news that the major US media are run by and for big business, or that the major media companies are themselves big businesses. Twenty years ago,...

Internet users from Brooklyn to Philadelphia suffered slow to nonexistent service Saturday after equipment at a New York-area network hub broke down, disrupting service for several hours. A spokesman for the Internet service provider Level 3 Communications Inc. LVLT +0.25% said technicians were working quickly to fix the outage, which cascaded down to customers using Cablevision Systems Corp.'s CVC -0.45% Optimum service and Time Warner Cable Inc., TWC -0.36% among others.

Time Warner Inc is planning to transfer its U.S. retirees from company-sponsored health plans and move them to private insurance exchanges. According to an August memo obtained by Reuters, the media company will make allocations to a Health Reimbursement Arrangement account for retirees to use towards the purchase of coverage on an exchange. Previously, Time Warner provided an indirect subsidy through a supplementary Medicare program.

Customers have been calling on Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp. to resolve their ongoing carriage dispute that has resulted in channels going dark in several markets including Los Angeles and New York. Now politicians are demanding an end to the blackout. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who recently won John F. Kerry's Senate seat, on Tuesday asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and restart negotiations.

Time Warner Cable's blackout of CBS continued Saturday, and neither side indicated a resolution of their dispute over fees is imminent. Time Warner dropped CBS Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other cities, leaving three million customers without the network's programs. The issue is fees that the cable company pays CBS to air its programs. Each has accused the other of making unreasonable demands ... The CBS stations that went dark are WCBS and WLNY in New York; KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles; KTVT and KTXA in Dallas; WBZ and WSBK in Boston; KDKA, WPCW-CW in...

LOS ANGELES – Three million Time Warner Cable customers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas are losing the CBS channel, as the cable provider says it is dropping the network in a dispute over fees.

HONG KONG (CNNMoney) Pioneering Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera has acquired Current TV, and will use the network's wider distribution avenues to launch a new U.S.-based channel. The takeover will provide Al Jazeera with access to millions of U.S. households, a lucrative market the Qatar-based broadcaster has long coveted. The deal also means the end of Current, the low-rated channel co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Al Jazeera entered into an agreement to buy Al Gore's failing network Current TV. Hours later, as a result of the purchase, Time Warner Cable dropped the station with a message reading to viewers "This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable." According to multiple news sources, Current co-founder Joel Hyatt said in a statement that TWC dropped his TV network because TWC "did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera." “Current will no longer be carried on TWC," wrote Hyatt. "This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will...

Microsoft is pulling the plug on MSN TV, a service formerly known as WebTV, as Apple ramps up its set-top box efforts. The pioneering service, one of the first to offer Internet access via television sets, will shut down September 30, Microsoft revealed in an e-mail to subscribers and an FAQ posted to its Web site. WebTV, which was founded by Web entrepreneur Steve Perlman in 1996, was acquired by Microsoft for $425 million in 1997. …

I've been 3 months trying to get TWC to come and get my defective DVR (we have 2) several calls promising they would come and they would adjust our bill blah blah blah. Then the new bill came and informed us we are getting a price increase so we talked it over and did some research. Our TV bill (We have their internet as well) was over 110 bucks a month. We realized we could get Hulu plus and receiver most of the shows we watch for about 9 bucks a month and the two shows we definitely watch that...

"Real competition in the cable television industry is forcing change at long last. And we can thank the dawn of streaming content. Time Warner Cable just axed the Ovation channel, and the cable giant threatens more channels may get trimmed in the coming months. But Time Warner Cable warns subscribers in an online notice today that there’s no guarantee it will continue to carry several other channels whose contracts expire soon including mainstays such as E!, Lifetime, and Starz, and a bevy of international services ... Former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV also remains in danger, although it survived...

Ovation, the arts-culture cable channel that's enjoyed a distribution surge the last several years, said Tuesday it expects to be dropped by Time Warner Cable on Dec. 31, potentially losing about 7 million subscribers and the key markets of New York City and Los Angeles. The independently owned network, reaching 51 million homes via cable, satellite and telco providers, went public about the expected drop in hopes of gaining support from viewers and arts organizations that would persuade Time Warner Cable to rethink the decision. “If Time Warner Cable proceeds then, in 2013, its customers who love the arts will...

Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read Back in 1983, approximately 0 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who...

When he announced his departure from CNN last month, President Jim Walton said the Atlanta-based news network needed “new thinking” and a plan for change. But can CNN remake itself? [Snip] Questions about CNN’s health, as well as its influence, are growing louder. Interviews with two dozen industry experts and former and current staffers of the cable news pioneer paint a picture of an entrenched organization struggling to connect with viewers and deeply wedded to a domestic news format that hasn’t retained its popularity. In some ways, those experts say, CNN has become a victim of its own success ......

(Reuters) - Al Gore's Current TV has bigger problems to deal with than a potential lawsuit from fired news anchor Keith Olbermann - namely not getting kicked off Time Warner Cable for low ratings. According to three sources with knowledge of the situation, Time Warner Cable Inc's carriage agreement with Current TV stipulates that, if the left-leaning political news network fails to meet a minimum threshold for overall viewers in a given quarter, financial penalties such as Current TV being required to increase marketing and promotion spending on the cable operator's systems are triggered. If Current TV misses the audience...

After seeing what happened to Rush with the Left and how the media, especially HBO treats women, I decided to do something about it. I got rid of my Time Warner Cable and got AT&T U-Verse package. It saves me over $100.00 per month and I don't have to deal with HBO and their hatred of women. Today I will write a letter to the editor of my local paper telling them what I did and why. If we can all do the same thing, maybe, just maybe it will make a difference.

Senator-elect Mike Lee has tapped one of Utah’s most prominent lobbyists to lead his Washington staff and coordinate his transition from candidate to senator. Spencer Stokes doesn’t officially become a Senate staffer until Jan. 5, but he plans to bounce between Utah and Washington in the coming weeks as he tries to hire staff, set up the Senate office and ramp down his lobbying activities. “It will be an exciting time to be back in D.C.,” said Stokes, who believes American voters used November’s election to protest government overreach. He said Republicans are now positioned to make an impact on...

Here's the rub. One package at the Time Warner Center's mall is getting more attention than most from shoppers and visitors alike -- the genitals of a 12-foot-tall bronze nude statue that stands near the complex's entrance. Fernando Botero's "Adam" has provided a titillating temptation to passers-by at the Shops at Columbus Circle to rub his miniscule manhood as friends snap their pictures. In fact, there's so much fondling going on that the patina on the nude's nether regions has turned golden, making it stand out against the darker brown of the rest of the statue.