U.S. Antitrust Lawyers Said to Be Leaning Against Comcast Merger

[herding cats]

Source: Bloomberg

Staff attorneys at the Justice Department’s antitrust division are nearing a recommendation to block Comcast Corp.’s bid to buy Time Warner Cable Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Attorneys who are investigating Comcast’s $45.2 billion proposal to create a nationwide cable giant are leaning against the merger out of concerns that consumers would be harmed and could submit their review as soon as next week, said the people.

The antitrust lawyers will present their findings to Renata Hesse, a deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, who will decide, along with the division’s top officials, whether to file a federal lawsuit to block the deal, they said.

The Justice Department lawyers have been contacting outside parties in the last few weeks to shore up evidence to support a potential case against the merger, one of the people said.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-17/u-s-antitrust-lawyers-said-to-be-leaning-against-comcast-merger

[PoliticAverse]

1. I say let them merge if they give up any territorial monopolies. n/t

[Warpy]

3. Monopoly is the only way they're going to survive. They are a dinosaur

and eventually their main selling point is going to be as an ultra fast net connection. Nearly everyone will have gone to online streaming rather than broadcast and cable channels, whether satellite or cable. The only way to keep their massive physical infrastructure going is by acting as a conduit for streaming services.

[onenote]

10. what territorial monopolies would the merger create?

Comcast and Time Warner Cable don't compete head to head anywhere as far as I know.

There are reasons to oppose the merger, but the creation of (or existence of) territorial monopolies isn't one of them.

[PoliticAverse]

11. I'm referring the their current territorial monopolies in cable service in parts of the country. n/t

[onenote]

12. Given that everyone in the US has a choice of at least three providers of multichannel video service

offering pretty comparable line ups of programming, it's hard to see where there are any local cable service monopolies any more. In 1992, cable had a 95 percent share of the market. Now its down to 54 percent and DirecTV and Dish are the second and third largest providers of video with Verizon, which also competes head to head with franchised cable operators not far behind. Here in the DC area, many people have five choices: Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Verizon and RCN.

Again, there are reasons for blocking the merger (such as the combined control of one of the top four broadcast network affiliates and the dominant cable operator in something like 8 of the top ten markets). But local monopolies in cable service? No one can make a credible case that such a thing exists anymore and neither DOJ or the FCC will go in that direction.

[onehandle]

2. This has been out of the news lately, so I was hoping this was bad news for Comcast. nt

[groundloop]

4. BLOCK IT....BLOCK IT !!!!!!

Comcast is a horrible company, service keeps going down and prices keep going up.

[christx30]

6. I wholeheartedly agree.

Block it. Block it.
And that's as an employee of one of those companies.

[thatgemguy]

5. We still enforce antitrust laws?

Cable TV has needed the scrutiny for years now. Bigger is not always better.

[KoKo]

7. K&R! I hope so....

[kacekwl]

8. LEANING ?

Do your fucking job. If this is not a antitrust violation what is ?

[davidpdx]

9. I hope this is the way it goes down

Comcast is already too large. Cable companies have gotten gobbled up in mergers and there are so few left other than the megacompanies like Comcast. If anything they need to break them up just like the banks.

[DAMANgoldberg]

13. Personally, I want this merger to go down...

and I am not a fan of Time Warner Cable, my provider here. However, if not Comcast, then Charter will make the bid, and you have a situation not unlike mobile telephony where you have mega AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint/T-Mobile. I am not a TWC fan, but there customer services is less toxic than Comcast.

I can understand the merger if Comcast were just a Multi System Operator (MSO), such as Time Warner Cable as they were spun off Time Warner. However, controlling content and distribution should be an automatic red flag and the company should have to be either a content provider or a distribution tool, but not both. Comcast gets to do what Time Warner, Cox, Charter, or any other provider can't do, and it's not fair or good business sense.