“CNBC‘s David Faber this evening tweeted that multiple unnamed sources have indicated to him that Comcast (CMCSA) will announce tomorrow a deal to purchase Time Warner Cable (TWC) for $159 per share, in an all-stock deal,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“With 277.9 million Time Warner Cable shares outstanding, the deal would have a market value of $$44.2 billion,” Ray reports. “With Time Warner Cable stock closing up in today’s session at $135.31, up 41 cents, the deal would offer TWC holders a nearly 18% premium.”
Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable in all stock deal worth $159 per $TWC share- sources. Deal set for tomorrow morning. Ratio is 2.875 $CMCSA.
— David Faber (@davidfaber) February 13, 2014
Comcast will indicate willingness to divest 3m subs from combination with $TWC– sources.
— David Faber (@davidfaber) February 13, 2014
Comcast deal for $TWC does not face ownership cap restrictions, but sure to get tough review from FCC.$CMCSA wants to avoid consent decree.
— David Faber (@davidfaber) February 13, 2014
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Back to the drawing board, Eddy!
Related articles:
Apple’s Eddy Cue back in the news, cutting deals in Hollywood – February 12, 2014
Apple to debut new set top box in April for Christmas launch; currently negotiating with Time Warner Cable, others – February 12, 2014
The cable companies consolidating into one big conglomerate. This will not lead to a happy ending for consumers.
Customers have been suffering from an unhappy ending for DECADES because of the monopolization of the cable TV industry.
Two of the WORST offenders in the cable and ISP industry combining into one monster? We’re screwed. BOTH of these companies HATE and LOATHE their customers and vampirize them at every opportunity. Let’s join into one giant vampire! What a great idea. To hell with anti-monopoly laws.
Please. Cable is dead. This is their last ditch effort. Nothing to worry about.
If anything, this will just lead to a quick dissimalation.
Would you care to back that up with some data?
Comcast is not threatened or desperate in any way. Cable companies are regional monopolies with enormous pricing power. In most populated areas, they have fended off satellite competition, assimilated the ISPs, and are well on their way to killing off traditional copper phone lines with VOIP bundled services.
What else is going to touch them? Cable companies will charge you about the same whether they supply you an internet feed or a traditional cable TV bundle or a VOIP phone. No cell phone or community WiFi is going to displace them anytime soon.
This consolidation will proceed for one reason only: it will allow Comcast to extract better profit deals from Hollywood. The consumer will see no difference.
With the advent of iTunes, Netflix and Hulu Plus, Comcast is becoming increasingly superfluous. Not to mention HBO Go, Showtime Anywhere soon to go provider free, and the NBC, ABC, WB and countless other networks that offer their content via free apps.
I shouldn’t need evidence to back up a clear paradigm shift that is happening before your eyes.
They’ll continue to provide our internet for now, but that’s about it.
Cable is dead (well, dying), yes.
But cable isn’t the issue, here. It’s TWC and Comcast’s near-stranglehold on the broadband internet business in many markets. Do we really want ONE company controlling that much internet bandwidth??
——RM
Relevant:
Seriously, Comcast is getting desperate. They raise their rates at least twice a year.
There was never truer video than this.
Oligopolies are full wall-to-wall scam and rip-off.
Comcast has been growing too rapidly already. I wish this were good news for TWC customers but that’d be really sad if true.
Agree, we have some really despicable companies growing way too big in this country. Amazon, Google, and Comcast and Verizon.
I wonder if this had anything to do with Apple trying to negotiate with TWC for the last couple of months?
Annex Austria. Check. Annex Poland. Check.
you forgot Sudetenland.
So eine schlechte Fehler, Verzeihung
Sie sind vergeben weil Sie haben schöne Brüste.
boy, you gotta watch those online translators, when I went from German to English it reads: “They are assigned because you have beautiful breasts.” but in my original English to German I had put “you are forgiven because you have nice breasts.”
at least I didn’t call you a jelly doughnut.
It’s the thought that counts, especially in the game of chess, my friend. 🙂
That was one world war ago, hannahjs, keep up with the times.
Invade Vietnam, check. Invade Iraq, check. Begin torture, check.
Noted, Road Warrior. Still, my particular analogy reached out for Internet legacy status by playing the analogy off the idea of annexation, not invasion, and working in Godwin’s law in the bargain. In trying to do too much with a few words, I missed the opportunity to also bomb US credibility. I only have two hands.
This could also be terrible news for Comcast if people buck and reject the system enmasse. Too bad Apple doesn’t put a chunk of it’s money into becoming an Ultra High Speed Internet provider. All we need is some really wicked fast dumb pipes for data to travel down and a well thought out Apple TV box.
Where exactly could they put those pipes?
Sorry, but unless it’s wireless, that really IS a pipe dream….
Two words.
Apple Satellites.
I had thought of that too. Would be awesome if they came out to announce that some Chinese satellite installments were actually Apple’s.
If you search MDN you’ll note we’ve been talking about Satellites for nine-years now.
There have always been rumors of an Apple HD content delivery system and unfortunately it turned out to be iTunes Store HD rentals and such.
Where does everyone else put them? Wireless seems like the true pipe dream, for now. Also undependable. Satellite maybe but ask Direct TV folk how that’s working for them, being subject to atmospheric interference. I’d settle for fiber optics.
My point exactly. You can’t just hang a wire on a pole, it has to follow NEC standards and they are about full up. The options are to pay to have each pole replaced with a taller one, which is an exorbitant amount, or bury, which cost even more.
Buying out an existing franchise is the cheapest method, even if you have to rebuild to upgrade.
Yeah, I know. People want to just snap their fingers and get better service. If it were that east, it would already exist…..
The NFPA National Electrical Code does not apply to utilities. They live in their own world. The NEC starts at your connection to the local utility. The NEC applies to industrial, commercial and residential electrical work. It also applies to elevator and communications wiring. A contractors electrical license is required for such work. Permits and inspections are also required for any work. The NEC is the basis (the minimum requirements) for electrical work. The local authority having jurisdiction, generally the public works department, starts with the NEC but can require even stronger requirements. Also, the current version of the NEC may or not be the version used in your locality. Your area may be operating under the rules of a past version of the NEC. Just because there is a new version of the NEC doesn’t mean that your city or state or county uses it. It has to be thoroughly scrutinized and approved. Electrical work ; it’s not for amateurs. “But the guy at Home Depot said that’s how to do it!”
Right, that should have been NESC, which regulates the distance between the power and other utilities on the pole.
Phone/cable are required to be 40″ below the hot/neutral or drip loop of a transformer or it’s base. Streetlights, regulating banks and risers also have requirements. These measurements are taken from the bolt. Separation is 30″ midspan.
That is the highest a communications cable can be placed on a power or phone pole. Whether phone or cable is the next one down depends on who was on it first, and the required separation between the two is 12″ at the bolt and 9″ at midspan.
The point is utility poles are fairly full in most places. You may be able to go 12″ below the lowest cable, but you must still maintain a minimum height requirement, which varies from 21′ over rail, 18′ over state roads, 16.5′ or 16 over streets and driveways or 10′ over grade.
To go along with this, many power utilities are looking at getting into communications (mainly REAs), so they may or may not be obliging in letting you on their poles. If they relent (which they eventually have to according to the FCC), they may charge as much as $25 pole fee per contact per year (these rates are being strangle challenged). That adds up.
Click to access UEP_2012_NESC_Update.pdf
Well that won’t make me hate Comcast any less.
How can they be so successful providing such a crappy product? Too bad there is not more competition in the cable space.
This merger should not be allowed to happen. Stifles competition. Apple needs to do something to bypass the cable companies. Which eventually could become the cable company. But obviously Apple is aware of this more than we are. But awareness and action are two different things. Entertainment delivery is part of the future for Apple and other companies. As is payment association with credit cards. Hardware and software will always be there but they just can’t be the main source of revenue in the future. But again, Apple is acutely aware of these things. And I would like to see them do something to bitch slap the cable companies. If I’m going to be gouged for money I’d rather be gouged by Apple. At least I can expect something for my money. Apple can easily buy AT&T but I’m not sure how the regulators would like that? The studios won’t rollover for Apple. The cable companies won’t rollover for Apple. Apple needs to make a move. A big move. It’s time.
The cable companies have been bitch slapping us for a long time. The pimps strutted for years, deepening their eyeshadow and primping their coiffure, lording it over us lowly consumers. If Apple comes up with a way to take down these assholes, millions of people will rise up with a roar of righteous retribution.
“Apple needs to do something to bypass the cable companies.”
Or Apple could dig into its $160 billion war chest & buy Time Warner.
This also means two of Hollywood’s biggest studios — Universal and Warner Bros. are now owned by the same company. And NBC now owns half of The CW. Whatever that’s worth.
Comcast is apparently buying TW cable (TWC), not Time Warner(TW). The CW network is owned jointly by Warner Bros. and CBS.
Thanks for correcting me. I misread the initial report.
So, they are going to have three names now?
It’s going to sound like a law firm.
Comcast Time and Warner 😉
More like: Dewey, Fukem and Howe
Clearly Apple’s fault. Time for the DOJ go after Apple’s monopoly on Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPods!
Two Points:
1) What DUMMY here was insisting at me last week that Time Warner wasn’t trying to sell off its Cable division? Come on! Fess up! <–Told you so. So there.
2) This week at TWiT.TV there has been one resounding phrase being endlessly repeated by show master Leo Laporte. And that phrase is:
“COMCAST IS THE WORST COMPANY IN AMERICA LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THE WORST COMPANY IN AMERICA!
One reason why was this OUTRAGEOUS scam Comcast subsidiary NBC pulled at the end of last week, the dastardly LIARS:
That NBC story 100% fraudulent
-By Robert Graham
The story shows Richard Engel “getting hacked” while in a cafe in Russia. It is wrong in every salient detail.
1) They aren’t in Sochi, but in Moscow, 1007 miles away.
2) The “hack” happens because of the websites they visit (Olympic themed websites), not their physical location. The results would’ve been the same in America.
3) The phone didn’t “get” hacked; Richard Engel initiated the download of a hostile Android app onto his phone. [update here] and he had to disable the security on the phone to do it.
It was 100% RIGGED as FUD with NO basis in fact.
*sniff*sniff* Plus, the unboxing of their ‘new’ MacBook Air was both brutal and heart wrenching! 😥 😥
So please Comcast: GO FRACK YOURSELF
BTW: ‘There will be blood’ before the FTC and FCC allow this buyout. MORE monopolization of the cable/ISP industry? I Don’t Think So.
But then again, our Corporate Oligarchy does have a way of BUYING THE GOVERNMENT, doesn’t it. 😛
It is called fascism. Can we all say Fascist Republicans?
Not if you want to be credible. Looking through the red or blue glasses of one set of cooperating overlords does not give you any credibility. It plays into both parties’ hands to talk about politics as if parties are what is most important about running a country. It is the two-party system (without seat limit checks to force power to be less centralized with more major parties) that is the entire problem.
But you could reasonably say “Fascist Republicans AND Fascist Democrats” though.
Certainly won’t help AAPL.
I’m on the local broadband committee and during our discussion with a fiber optic provider they told us it took 8 months to get permission from the local short line railroad to hang a line over their tracks. And many months to get approval to hang their lines on the same poles that the phone company was using. So that leads me to believe that any new Internet infrastructure would take forever to come on line.
1-Faber got the tip with his paycheck- CNBC is OWNED by CONcast.
2-Customers of TW looking for better should be ready for disappointment. My service is from CONcast and used to be from TW. CONcast makes TW look good.
3-If Apple stopped borrowing money to buy back stock they could have bought CONcast and TW and restructured it to their liking before spinning it off. THAT is disruption, Tim.
4- We should call our elected officials and clearly state our opposition to this unless we get something in return:
a- CONcast agrees to allow a la carte cable- the death of bundling.
or
b- CONcast agrees to be regulated as a common carrier and can grow more under regulatory oversight.
B will never happen, but the choice will make dropping the bundles more palatable.
Free Market, my ass.
Here is a map showing the footprint from the NYT.
http://tinyurl.com/prynord
What about wireless internet via cell towers?
Just had a daydream… TWC learned enough from Apple, during their negotiations to see the writing on the wall, the ultimate demise of Cable Companies stranglehold on their customers. And seeing the best option was to cash out now, and get out while the getting was good, they finally entertain an offer for a takeover that they have been resisting for some time. …A guy can dream
I had that dream! A version of it anyway. Could it happen that a big company’s leadership EVER REALLY reads the handwriting on the wall, please God, and acts accordingly, instead of stonewalling, being in denial, and dismissing the competition in condescending terms whilst changing nothing, believing like an insane drug addict that everything is going to be OK?
We’re waiting for a leader like that. A lot of them have gone down the drain in the last seven years, all singing the same tune, all embarrassingly off-key. In a just world, their executive compensation would be yanked.