Free Republic

Spectrum News examines the recent crackdown on immigration and its impact on the lives and businesses of immigrants in America, in the one-hour special, "Immigration in America."

From:john.podesta@gmail.com To: ssolow@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2016-01-19 16:04 Subject: Re: charter-time/warner See no reason to have a view at this point. Don't think there is any pressure to oppose and make this another example of consolidation; on the other hand no upside in supporting. On Tuesday, January 19, 2016, Sara Solow wrote: > John, > > After you met with them -- I spent about an hour with the woman from > Charter hearing about the Time-Warner merger / their business model / their > policy requests. > > I'm curious what your impression was. > > I actually thought the business...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A former Marine says he was fired from his contract job with Time Warner Cable in Charlotte after he lowered the American flag to half-staff on Memorial Day. The 29-year-old Thornwell was fired Tuesday. The placement service that arranged the job for Thornwell said Time Warner told them they were disturbed by what was termed his "passion for the flag and (his) political affiliation."

Over the past couple of weeks, Time Warner high speed here around Columbia has been randomly dropping out due to DNS getting lost. An outage can be a few minutes to pushing half an hour. I've changed DNS to some of the open ones, found a firmware update for the router and applied it just to rule out things at home. I was looking to see if anyone else was experiencing the frustration. If I posted this incorrectly, I'm sure the mods will handle it.

As the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable invoked the name of Vin Scully in lobbying DirecTV to carry SportsNet LA, the Hall of Fame broadcaster said Wednesday he was not entirely comfortable "to have my name tossed into a negotiation.” Said Scully: “I’m pretty shy with that kind of stuff.” The beloved Scully, 88, is entering his 67th and final season as voice of the Dodgers. A TWC spokesman said Tuesday that the company had cut its asking price for the Dodgers-owned channel "especially because of the historic nature of this year, with it being Vin Scully’s final season.”

As the Federal government continues to expand its reach and powers uninterrupted one of the areas that it has become increasingly active in is scrutinizing the mergers and acquisitions of companies. It is appropriate for federal agencies to act as impartial referees to ensure industries remain competitive and consumers are protected. Unfortunately, these agencies and lawmakers are being pressured and influenced more and more by outside actors operating to protect their own bottom lines by disrupting the free market. The Federal Communications Commission is tasked with regulating competition in the telecommunications sector. But an agency with such an important task...

Commentary: A proposal by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler calls for cable companies like Comcast to "unlock the set-top box." Unlocking isn't enough. The box should die, once and for all, and be replaced by apps. There's no technological reason that Comcast, or Time Warner Cable, or Charter or any other cable TV provider needs to provide physical hardware at all. There's no need for warehouses full of cable boxes or arduous "service windows" where the technician supposedly shows up "sometime between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m."-- or not--to fix (or more likely just replace) your device. Full-fledged pay...

The Weather Channel says it is getting rid of its reality TV shows, along with morning shows led by Sam Champion and Al Roker. The struggling network is looking to get back to its roots, with less expensive programming and a lineup that appeals more to weather geeks. An estimated 50 people out of The Weather Channel's staff of 1,400 are losing jobs as a result, the network said on Thursday. The NBC Universal-owned network had lured Champion from ABC's "Good Morning America" to host "AMHQ," a weather-focused morning news program. Starting in early November, Champion will work on weather...

Many people dislike receiving robocalls. Araceli King disliked receiving 153 of them from a single company. Time Warner Cable Inc must pay the insurance claims specialist $229,500 for placing 153 automated calls meant for someone else to her cellphone in less than a year, even after she told it to stop, a Manhattan federal judge ruled on Tuesday. King, of Irving, Texas, accused Time Warner Cable of harassing her by leaving messages for Luiz Perez, who once held her cellphone number, even after she made clear who she was in a seven-minute discussion with a company representative. The calls were...

In a deal that affects one in six American households, Charter Communications on Tuesday proposed a three-way merger with two other cable and broadband providers, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

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...

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...

Cable TV is about to get more expensive for millions of consumers because of a bidding war between networks and the country’s most powerful sports leagues. Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and scores of rural cable providers are tacking on sports surcharges each month, the direct result of higher fees they are paying to ESPN and other sports networks to carry their channels. Beginning Feb. 5, DirecTV will raise fees by 5.7 percent. The rise in cable prices is likely to test the patience of customers, who may already be tempted to cut their cords in exchange for streaming options that...

That would be the Democratic, Barack Obama-appointed FCC chair, who spent yesterday backpedaling from his boss on a major policy announcement. Obama went so far as to push out a video demanding unilateral action from the FCC on Net Neutrality, the latest White House distraction from the disastrous midterm elections and an attempt to show that Obama is still relevant: “As long as I’m President,” Obama says into the camera after cheesy, 1996-style buffering graphics, “that’s what I’ll be fighting for, too.” He may be fighting for it, but Obama clearly isn’t managing for it very well. Within hours of this...

Cable company stocks fell sharply Monday after President Obama called for the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify Internet access as a utility. If the FCC were to approve the White House’s recommendations, the Internet would be regulated like other utilities such as electricity, water and telephone services. The White House is calling for an “explicit ban” on deals between broadband Internet providers and online services like Netflix, Amazon or YouTube to move their content faster, a potential new source of revenue for cable companies. While the FCC is an independent agency, Obama’s statement could put political pressure on FCC commissioners...

The company’s cable division has appointed a new executive in charge of the “customer experience.” After years of customer service complaints, Comcast said Friday it is appointing a new executive to fix the problem.

Time Warner Cable has agreed to broadcast the final week of the Los Angeles Dodgers' regular season baseball on local broadcast station KDOC. The move -- in a show of goodwill to Los Angeles area baseball fans -- enables millions of viewers throughout the region to watch the final six games of the regular season. The Dodgers are locked in a tight race to clinch the National League West Division title.

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...

If you’re the customer of a major American internet provider, you might have been noticing it’s not very reliable lately. If so, there’s a pretty good chance that a graph like this is the reason:These graphs comes from Level 3, one of the world’s largest providers of “transit,” or long-distance internet connectivity. The graph on the left shows the level of congestion between Level 3 and a large American ISP in the Dallas area. In the middle of the night, the connection is less than half-full and everything works fine. But during peak hours, the connection is saturated. That produces...

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,...