Charter To Buy Time Warner For $55B

Via Mashable:

Time Warner Cable didn't take long to recover from the breakup of its deal with Comcast. The second-largest cable TV provider in the U.S. is close to a deal to be acquired by Charter Communications for $55 billion in cash and stock, according to reports from Bloomberg and CNN Money. The deal also reportedly include the acquisition of Bright House Networks, another cable TV provider. A combined Charter, TWC and Bright House is expected to have less trouble getting past government regulators since it will have a smaller broadband Internet audience. Still, the FCC effectively scuttled the Comcast/TWC deal on concerns about negatively impacting the burgeoning Internet-based television market that has grown rapidly in the past year. Such concerns would undoubtedly be investigated about this newest deal.

Should the deal go through, the combined company will be called New Charter.

Comcast-TWC Merger Is Dead

CNN Money reports:

Comcast is planning to walk away from its $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable after pursuing it for more than a year. The decision comes amid intense, possibly insurmountable scrutiny of the deal by government regulators. It is an extraordinary turnabout for a cable giant not accustomed to losing. The deal would have reshaped American media and given Comcast unique control over the market for broadband Internet. But on the bright side for Comcast, the deal has no "breakup fee" -- industry parlance for a financial penalty for giving up on the merger. The collapse of the merger, first reported by Bloomberg News on Thursday afternoon, came one day after a series of meetings between the cable companies and government officials. The officials shared a long list of reservations about the proposed combination of two cable and broadband companies and indicated they may take action to block it.

The formal announcement will come today.

SCOTUS Rules Against TV Streamer

Via Business Insider:

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that had ruled in favor of Aereo, a service that lets you stream live network TV. The court found that Aereo service violated copyrights owned by TV broadcasters, marketers, and distributors whose programs the company streamed. "This ruling appears sweeping and definitive, determining that Aereo is illegal," the lawyer Tom Goldstein wrote on SCOTUSBlog. The case will have lasting implications for the way content is delivered online. Aereo's technology uses special HD antennas that are about the size of a thumbnail to pull in broadcast TV from the airwaves. The signal is then transferred over the internet to your device. Copyright law generally allows you to seek permission before broadcasting a public performance. In arguing that its service was legal, Aereo said the TV broadcasts counted as private performances because they were broadcast through individual antennas into people's homes. The Supreme Court did not buy that argument.

The big winners here, of course, are the cable companies.

Tweet Of The Day - RCN

RCN is responding to people bitching at TWC on Twitter.

200 Channels And Nothing But Cats

Nielsen reports that the average US home gets almost 200 channels but only 17 channels are regularly watched.

According to Nielsen’s forthcoming Advertising & Audiences Report, the average U.S. TV home now receives 189 TV channels—a record high and significant jump since 2008, when the average home received 129 channels. Despite this increase, however, consumers have consistently tuned in to an average of just 17 channels. This data is significant in that it substantiates the notion that more content does not necessarily equate to more channel consumption. And that means quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers. So the best way to reach consumers in a world with myriad options is to be the best option.

Comcast To Buy Time-Warner Cable

Comcast announced today that it will buy Time-Warner Cable in an $45B all-stock deal. Whoa.

The friendly takeover comes as a surprise after months of public pursuit of Time Warner Cable by smaller rival Charter Communications Inc, and immediately raised questions as to whether it would pass the scrutiny of anti-trust regulators. Comcast will pay $158.82 per share, which is roughly what Time Warner Cable demanded from Charter. The combined company would divest 3 million subscribers, about a quarter of Time Warner's 12 million customers. Together with Comcast's 22 million video subscribers, the roughly 30 million total would represent just under 30 percent of the U.S. pay television video market. The new cable giant would tower over its closest video competitor, DirecTV, which has about 20 million video customers.

Comcast bought NBC-Universal last year for $17B.

Glenn Beck Vs Time Warner Cable

Via Glenn Beck's The Blaze:

Many Time Warner Cable customers are unhappy about the company’s recent decision to add the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera America to its channel line-up while maintaining there are no concrete plans to offer TheBlaze TV. Customers flocked to Time Warner Cable’s Facebook page to express their frustration, many of them threatening to cancel their service if the provider refuses to pick up TheBlaze TV. “Al Jazeera?!? Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me. Add the Blaze or I’m gone,” one Facebook user wrote. “I am a Time Warner customer for my internet and cable. If you don’t add the Blaze, you can say goodbye to me forever!” another wrote.

Al Jazeera entered the US market back in January when it bought Al Gore's Current TV for $500M. (Gore had declined to sell the channel to Beck.) Beck's web-channel has 300,000 subscribers at $99/year.

CBS & Time-Warner End Cable Feud

But not before everybody missed the US Open. Just in via press release:

CBS Corporation and Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have reached an agreement for carriage of CBS owned stations on Time Warner Cable systems across the country, as well as Showtime Networks, CBS Sports Network and Smithsonian Channel, it was announced today by representatives for the companies. Programming on all networks will resume at 6:00 PM ET today. Though specific terms of the deal are not being disclosed, the agreement includes retransmission consent, as well as Showtime Anytime and VOD, for CBS stations on Time Warner Cable systems in New York (WCBS and WLYW), Los Angeles (KCBS and KCAL) and Dallas (KTVT and KTXA.)

The blackout began one month ago today.

Time Warner - Thanks For Your Patience

The CBS blackout is in its third week.  If it continues into the start of the NFL season, people are really going to start losing their shit.

Time-Warner Cable: We Don't Want A War

Glenn Beck: Get Me Back On Cable

Since Glenn Beck left Fox News to launch his web-only television show, he has devolved even further (if that's possible) into crackpot fringe conspiracy theory-laden batshittery.  And today he launched a campaign to force cable providers to pick up his web channel.  Think Progress weighs in:

Beck started promoting GetTheBlaze.com on Monday, asking fans to demonstrate to their television provider that there is wider demand for the libertarian channel. If his channel does get picked up by cable television providers, anyone who pays for cable will subsidize Beck’s channel, regardless of whether or not they watch it. As The New York Times explains, TV channels get small per-subscriber fees, whether or not the subscribers ever watch. Beck argues that carrying TheBlaze would be no different from supposedly ideological cable channels like MSNBC and Al Jazeera America. But since leaving Fox, Beck’s radical libertarianism has gone even further fringe.

Hit the link for the crackpottery currently getting heavy coverage on Beck's channel.

FCC Allows Basic Cable Encryption

If you've been hooking up your internet modem to rip off basic cable, those days are over.

Federal regulators are letting cable companies scramble all their TV signals, closing a loophole that lets many households watch basic cable channels for free. The Federal Communications Commission voted Friday to lift a ban on encryption of basic cable signals, saying it will reduce the number of visits by cable technicians to disconnect service and reduce cable theft.

Patrick Stewart Vs Time-Warner Cable

A spokesman for Time-Warner responds: "Our Care and Social Media teams are fully engaged to make sure he's well tended to. On behalf of the many Trekkers and Sir Patrick Stewart fans across our company, I can assure you, we will make it so."

Canada's Porn Channel Ad

(Via Copyranter)

Jane Fonda: Teabaggers Forced QVC To Cancel My Appearance

According to a post on Jane Fonda's personal blog, wingnuts forced QVC to cancel a planned appearance to hawk her new book, Prime Time.

Bottom line, this has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us. I do not understand what the far right stands to gain by continuing with these myths. In this case, they denied a lot of people the chance to hear about a book that can help make life better, easier and more fulfilling. I am deeply grateful for all of the support I have been getting since this happened, including from my Vietnam Veterans friends.

Time-Warner Cable Launches "Look Back"

After test-running the feature in some markets, this week Time-Warner Cable officially launched its free "Look Back" feature, which is a sort of On Demand function that allows you to pull up shows that have run in the previous 72 hours. That's handy if you forgot to set your DVR or see a bunch of raves about something on Facebook. In NYC the feature is currently available on 48 channels.

Open Thread Thursday

Internet, landline, cable TV. What do you pay, who do you pay it to, and what do you get for your money?

Disney Yanks ABC Signal In NYC

The image above was ABC7's misleading final message to NYC last night just before their parent company Disney yanked their signal to Cablevision's three million subscribers. Disney wants a $40M annual chunk of the dough that Cablevision collects for local/basic channels like ABC7 and the cable provider won't pay it. So Disney pulled the plug, not Cablevision, despite what the message implies.

More than 3 million Cablevision customers lost their ABC affiliate tonight and may lose the Academy Awards broadcast as well. It happened at 12:01 AM ET Sunday in this retrans impasse between Disney/ABC and Cablevision, which has tried to personally blame Disney CEO Bob Iger. "It seems their attacks on Bob have not worked," a Disney insider just told me. "They miscalculated his resolve. Bullying and name-calling will not change the fact that cablevision_logoCablevision’s customers are switching to other providers en masse." Indeed, Disney has been urging its WABC-TV viewers to switch to satellite. A source close to Cablevision refuted the claim that viewers were leaving the provider in droves and responded to me, "Disney may thinks it's good business to attack its own viewers and black out the Oscars in NY. They may call it resolve. We call it stupidity."

The two companies have been publicly warring with increasingly nasty commercials about the issue airing every few minutes for the last two weeks. The last time Cablevision battled a network over fees, their NYC customers lost HGTV and the Food Network for six weeks. Industry watchers are surprised that Disney was so bold as to take this action just hours before the Oscars, one of NYC's highest rated shows every year. At the moment, ABC7 is offering instructions on how to get its signal over the air.

C-SPAN Dot MF Org

The greatest fake ad for C-SPAN that could ever be.

(Via - AmericaBlog)