Friday, April 4, 2014

The deal continues...

Maybe you remember my last post on the Comcast Time Warner cable deal but if not, here is a refresher. Comcast is in the midst of acquiring Time Warner cable for a whopping $45 billion. Many have criticized this situation as a farce but lobbyist David Cohen is quick to
combat any such claims. My initial perspective on the merger was that the deal resembled that of a monopoly, but apparently even after the merger Comcast will still represent less then 30 percent of the viewing population according to Cohen. Technically after the merger Comcast would cover more then 30 percent of the market but they proposed to drop 3 million of their viewers to illustrate that they wouldn't. Cohen believes that the company will not infringe on peoples choice of TV providers and in fact will lead to healthy competition amongst competitors. At times it can be hard to know if what Cohen is saying is sincere or just influenced by the millions of dollars he makes, what do you think? All he says are hypotheticals and what ifs but doesn't seem to give cold hard reasoning to why this merger is beneficial to all. In till I can get cold hard facts about how this benefits the consumer and isn't just a power play I will be skeptic to the transition. Based on the history of large mergers that seem to monopolize a given market, prices tend to sky rocket for the average folk and a few greedy people tend to fill their pockets. If Comcast can state that they will not dramatically increase prices, not have too many commercials, and not start adding cheap programing, then I would be more open to the idea. What do you think about it...


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