The once-hyped merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, to create a massive pit of despair and a nation of cord-cutters, is apparently not going to happen. According to Bloomberg News, "Comcast Corp. is planning to walk away from its proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said, after regulators planned to oppose the deal."
Bloomberg, which first reported the problems, says:
This week, U.S. Federal Communications Commission staff joined lawyers at the Justice Department in opposing the planned transaction. FCC officials told the two biggest U.S. cable companies on Wednesday that they are leaning toward concluding the merger doesn’t help consumer consumers, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
An FCC hearing can take months to complete and effectively kill a deal by dragging out the approval process beyond the companies’ time frame for completion. Justice Department staff is also leaning against the deal, Bloomberg reported last week.
As Columbia professor and NY lieutenant governor candidate Tim Wu said at a hearing last year, "Comcast is fighting hard against the rules which they're purporting to want to live by. I would like to defend the cable model, where you pay for the 200 channels. They don't want people core-cutting and just becoming internet users. To keep people paying their $150 dollars per month, and maybe paying more, they can't have people quitting cable. And that means they have to make the Internet competitors to cable TV lousy, no good, never quite as good. That's really what the game is here."
Comcast will make a final decision today and break the news tomorrow. Perhaps they'll get this employee to make the announcement.
