Advocacy Group Says Comcast Merger is Bad for Families

By ChristianPress |
Comcast Corporation and Time Warner Cable announced Thursday that their Boards of Directors have approved a definitive agreement for Time Warner Cable to merge with Comcast. The agreement is a stock-for-stock transaction in which Comcast will acquire 100 percent of Time Warner Cable’s 284.9 million shares outstanding for shares of CMCSA amounting to approximately $45.2 billion in equity value.
“This combination creates a company that delivers maximum value for our shareholders, enormous opportunities for our employees and a superior experience for our customers,” said Robert D. Marcus, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable. “Comcast and Time Warner Cable have been the leaders in all of the industry’s most important innovations of the last 25 years and this merger will accelerate the pace of that innovation.”
The Parents Television Council issued a statement in response to the news that Comcast intends to buy Time Warner Cable in a deal worth $45.2 billion.
“Combining Comcast and Time Warner Cable would create a behemoth of near-unstoppable market power that will invariably be anti-consumer and anti-family. The end result will create the biggest media company in the world with control of nearly half of all TV sets in the country and would make what is already the biggest broadband provider even bigger,” said PTC President Tim Winter.
Cable executives maintain that the transaction will create a leading technology and innovation company, differentiated by its ability to deliver ground-breaking products on a superior network while leveraging a national platform to create operating efficiencies and economies of scale.
“A horizontally and vertically integrated Comcast/Time Warner Cable entity would wield calamitous market leverage over consumers. Unless and until Comcast — or, for that matter, any other potential suitor of Time Warner Cable — agrees to allow customers to choose and pay for only the cable networks they want coming into their homes, the Parents Television Council will vehemently oppose any such merger,” said Winter. “Consumers are the ones who should have more control, which we’ve been saying for years through our support for a consumer cable choice solution that would allow consumers to choose and pay for only the cable networks they want.”
The merger will give the new company 30 million total subscribers.