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Bloomberg Report Suggests Comcast & Time Warner Merger Dead
andyring writes: According to Bloomberg News, the Time Warner/Comcast merger of raw evil is dead. Comcast plans as early as tomorrow to withdraw the merger proposal, "after regulators decided that the deal wouldn't help consumers, making approval unlikely" according to the story. If so, that means regulators won't have the chance to kill it themselves.
They just need to regroup, figure out who to buy off, and do it again.
I'm sure someone is up for re-election, or wants a cushy job in the private sector, who can be "convinced of the merits of the case" with a suitcase full of cash.
Corporations don't stop doing crap like this just because the outcome would be bad for consumers.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Kill it with Fire.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I hope both of these companies go bankrupt. It's amazing how bad service and prices get the moment a company is given a monopoly.
i mean, not only do they get rejected by their long-time suitors, but they won't even get a deal breakup/termination fee out of it, either.....
Thank goodness. But a long way to go for real competition.
The next time we have FTC and FCC leadership appointed by a Republican they'll just try the merger again, and they could easily succeed. I just don't think allowing the merger would seriously hurt the Republican president who did it. Republican strategists have their voters so anxious and paranoid over emotional topics like terrorism, gay marriage, marijuana, and immigration that who exactly would change their votes over internet service? Who would help the socialists take over and the floodgates open and another 9/11 happen just for ethical billing and some decent customer service?
No one who believes their lies would ever vote D or I for such a trifling issue.
If the US is an oligarchy controlled by the rich and powerful, and the Obama administration is full of corporate shills- then why didn't this merger get approved?
As much as I feel disappointed and disgusted by things that Obama and other Democrats have done over the last several years, I still don't buy the whole line that some people here on Slashdot trot out all the time: that Democrats and Republicans are the same thing.
You know that this deal would have sailed through and there's no way the FCC would have pushed for Title 2 regulation, if a Republican were in the White House right now.
So remember, as dumb and crappy as some parties' actions have been lately, who you vote for still matters, even if only in limited ways. Yes, some large scale issues are pretty much a wash between the two, but there are still some issues that you can have an influence in with your vote. Pick the party and candidates who you feel are more likely to be on the same side of the issues you care about, regardless of what the naysayers say.
Also, a shout out to Al Franken for being one of, if not the only top politicians to have questioned and criticized this merger from the beginning.
You mean we are still stuck with TWO pieces of raw evil?
Also, a shout out to Al Franken for being one of, if not the only top politicians to have questioned and criticized this merger from the beginning.
You just invalidated your entire argument there. If Ds were truly different than Rs in this regard, then more Ds would have been on Franken's side from the beginning.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
...nothing more bizarre and perplexing than Comcast's massive ad blitz for the merger. With their Orwellian promises of more features, better service and more choice. Wow, what massive piles of BS.
Not all the rich and powerful got there the same way, and they don't all have the same goals. Some extremely large and influential companies lobbied *against* this merger, including (but hardly limited to) Netflix and Google, because their owners thought the merger could lose them money.
The oligarchs in America work together on plenty of issues, this just isn't one of them.
Minions of evil may return to hell with all due haste.
I'll believe it when I actually see it.
Another win for big government over private enterprise!
Hail Dorothy!
(cliching fist in a backward motion) Yes!
happy to hear that some Good in the world does surface from time to time.
But I didn't think it'd come this quickly. I figured it'd be a couple weeks after DOJ and the FCC moved to block, in hopes they could talk those two into some kind of greater divestiture that'd allow it. They wouldn't have been talked into it, but I'm surprised Comcast didn't try.
Guess I'd give Comcast's lawyers some credit. They saw the writing on the wall and pulled the plug instead of running up fees for no reason.
I'm just amused by the notion that anybody anywhere ever thought this would be "good for the consumers".
TW will buy the valuable bits and pieces of Comcast over the next few years which will end up being the same thing. The detritus that's left will be sold for pennies and the non-insiders will be left holding the bag. If at first you don't succeed bribe, bribe again.
The market is speaking to you Comcast and TWC! Perhaps it would behoove both of you to listen to what it is saying.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Actually, I'm surprised so much is happening on Obama's final term. Usually the second term of a president is coasting because he knows he's not getting re-elected, while everyone else is clamoring for his spot in the next election, so no matter what the president does, it doesn't matter because everyone else is using it to campaign for 4 years. Doesn't matter which party - oppose the president if it gets you votes.
Hence the term lame duck - the president's second term is supposed to be one where they are powerless and really just keeping the White House warm...
I'm kind of surprised that this deal had investor support. The larger business model is under attack on many fronts, content delivery by streaming video, Internet by municipal-backed and private fiber vendors who are seeing opportunity -- CenturyLink, one of the few companies who compete with Comcast for poor service, just strung fiber optic cabling on the poles behind my house which is supposed to support gigabit residential Internet speeds. And even NBCUniversal's strength in content creation is under assault by Netflix and Amazon original productions.
Even if you assume greater profits from increased monopoly abuse by a combined Comcast/TWC, huge mergers face big costs internally and I'd question whether they will have time enough even as a monopoly to recoup those costs and the investment expenses of the merger deal itself.
Plus, the larger the entity, the less it is able to adapt to the huge changes sweeping the video content and Internet markets. Cable is already a dinosaur, being a bigger dinosaur has never proven helpful.
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange dealings even death may die.
and for humanitarian reasons, I think we should leave him that way.
It keeps saying, "Braiiiins! Braiiiins!"
Have gnu, will travel.
Too much riding.
Too many wanting 'under-the-table-cash'.
Even Congress scoffs at such buffoonery. Ha ha.
Dead Deal.
I would much rather the regulators had their chance to shut this down.
The message needs to be sent that we're not going to take it anymore!
So what's up with the government?
The Faa did a reasonable thing on drones.
The Fcc did a reasonable thing on the Internet.
The Doj did a reasonable thing with this merger.
I'm confused, who are these guys are what happened to the usual cast of characters?
What they do with the Patriot act will be telling.