NEWS

Comcast is dropping $45 billion Time Warner Cable bid

The Associated Press
South Bend Tribune

NEW YORK (AP) — Comcast is dropping its $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable after heavy regulatory pushback.

A combination of the No. 1 and No. 2 U.S. cable companies would have put nearly 30 percent of TV and about 55 percent of broadband subscribers under one roof, which would give the resulting behemoth unprecedented power over what Americans watch and download.

Competitors, consumer groups, and politicians have criticized the deal, saying it would lead to higher prices and less choice.

"The proposed merger would have posed an unacceptable risk to competition and innovation, including to the ability of online video providers to reach and serve consumers," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a written statement.

One of the concerns consumer advocates and competitors had with the Comcast deal was that it could undermine the streaming video industry that is reshaping TV. Comcast could, for example, require onerous payments from new online-only video providers for connecting to its network. Dish, the satellite TV company behind the new Web video service Sling TV, and Netflix opposed the deal.

"We always structured this deal in a way that would enable us to walk away," Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts said in an interview on CNBC.

"We have to live with it, and respect that, and move on," Roberts said of the government's opposition to the deal.

Even with Comcast and Time Warner Cable saying Friday that the deal was off, cable companies are likely to keep combining as costs rise for the shows, sports and movies they pipe to subscribers and video customers decrease.

Many analysts expect that Charter Communications Inc., which lost out on its bid for Time Warner Cable Inc. to Comcast Corp., to resurrect its effort.

A combined Charter and Time Warner Cable would have 15 million video customers and 16.5 million Internet customers. That's still smaller than Comcast alone, which has 22.4 million video subscribers and 22 million Internet customers.

And the $48.5 billion combination of DirecTV and AT&T is still expected to go through.

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FILE - This Feb. 11, 2011 file photo shows the Comcast logo on one of the company's vehicles, in Pittsburgh. Wall Street appears increasingly convinced Comcast’s $45.2 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable is dead. telling indicator is the gap between the value Comcast’s all-stock bid assigned to each Time Warner Cable share and Time Warner Cable stock’s current price. That was at its widest point yet Thursday, April 23, 2015, a signal that investors are giving just 20 to 30 percent odds that the deal will go through, said Nomura analyst Adam Ilkowitz. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)