Washington Post editorialist slams Comcast-Time Warner deal

For the past several weeks, Speed Matters has run a series of posts (listed below) piling on evidence that Comcast and Time Warner are generally: publicly despised providers of poor service; lavishly spending lobbying groups; anti-competitive.

But it seems we were far outdone by Washington Post editorial writer Catherine Rampell today. No, it wasn’t an April first joke, but she called Comcast and Time Warner everything but fools.

“Can we block a merger just because the two companies involved are jerks?” she asked.

Then answered, “I bet you know which merger I’m thinking of: the one where America’s most hated company wants to join forces with America’s second-most hated company (Time Warner Cable and Comcast, in no particular order).”

Rampell went on for eight more paragraphs providing evidence on why these communications providers are so universally loathed, and why this merger should be stopped. Then, she offered some equally substantive arguments “to be concerned about the anti-competitive consequences of a Comcast-Time Warner merger...”

“For example,” she said, “Comcast owns NBCUniversal; with a bigger footprint, Comcast might have a greater incentive to charge competitors such as DirecTV more for NBC programming in order to raise rivals’ costs and thereby drive more consumers to Comcast. Or the newly combined company might use its greater bargaining power to keep out, or at least extract more money from, companies that offer competing video-on-demand services that rely on Comcast for delivery (such as Netflix).”

Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger is a bad deal (Washington Post, Apr. 1, 2014)

As he lobbies Washington, Comcast VP says he’s not a lobbyist (Speed Matters, Mar. 12, 2014)

Multistate AG taskforce looking at Comcast-Time Warner merger (Speed Matters, Mar. 20, 2014)

Time Warner’s sell-out CEO to get $80 million (Speed Matters, Mar. 21, 2014)

Comcast usually gets its way with states and cities (Speed Matters, Mar. 26, 2014)