Free Republic

That would be the Democratic, Barack Obama-appointed FCC chair, who spent yesterday backpedaling from his boss on a major policy announcement. Obama went so far as to push out a video demanding unilateral action from the FCC on Net Neutrality, the latest White House distraction from the disastrous midterm elections and an attempt to show that Obama is still relevant: “As long as I’m President,” Obama says into the camera after cheesy, 1996-style buffering graphics, “that’s what I’ll be fighting for, too.” He may be fighting for it, but Obama clearly isn’t managing for it very well. Within hours of this...

The company’s cable division has appointed a new executive in charge of the “customer experience.” After years of customer service complaints, Comcast said Friday it is appointing a new executive to fix the problem.

My cable bill jumped a bunch this month. When I asked why, several promotions had expired etc etc etc.Anyway, the service rep at Time Warner gave me a better price on a package deal that includes cable TV, internet and phone service. A question I have is about continuity of their phone service if the cable/power goes out. It does happen sporatically here.

The media giant 21st Century Fox, the empire run by Rupert Murdoch, made an $80 billion takeover bid in recent weeks for Time Warner Inc. but was rebuffed. The bold approach could put Time Warner in play and might again ignite a reshaping of the media industry, prompting a new spate of mega-mergers among the nation’s largest entertainment companies. Mr. Murdoch has built a global media juggernaut over nearly five decades spanning studios, television channels and newspapers, in part, by pursuing bold deals that were often rebuffed at first by the targets of his overtures, only to later acquiesce. Time...

Cable TV's sports costs are prompting a growing number of people to "cut the cord". Exhibit A: The $8 billion charged by the Dodgers for broadcast rights to their games knowing full well that pay-TV companies would have to pass along this sky-high cost to all customers. Time Warner Cable is the Dodgers' partner in crime. It paid that whopping sum for exclusive rights to distribute the Dodgers channel to other pay-TV companies, assuming, like the team, that it would get away with sticking both fans and non-fans with an extra $4 to $5 fee every month. The harsh reality,...

Comcast, which employs more than 100 lobbyists, spent almost $19 million last year on lobbying activities. Its president and CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is a golf buddy of President Obama’s, and a Democratic donor who has contributed thousands of dollars not only to the president’s campaigns, but also to the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the DNC Services Corporation, and to Steny Hoyer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bob Casey. Roberts’ executive vice president, David Cohen, is a former aide to Democratic bigwig Ed Rendell. Cohen skirts lobbying regulations through loopholes, has raised more than $2 million for...

Democratic members of Congress and the Obama administration have extensive ties to Comcast and Time-Warner, the two cable giants currently awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission on a $45 billion merger. One that has gone mostly overlooked: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D., Nev.) chief of staff, David Krone, is Comcast’s former senior vice president for corporate affairs. Krone moved from Comcast to Reid’s office in 2011 under ethically questionable circumstances,

What a shock- a Russian-Ukrainian billionaire who made his initial fortune from dubious stock shares eminating from the breakup of the Soviet Union has been sending big, fat checks this year to establishment Republicans and Democrats who aren't too uppity re. foreign policy.Of course, most billionaire Russians who are part owners of huge Russian mining/energy companies over there are KGB/FSB and/or mafia-connected... just like Putin And London resident Leonard Blavatnik is a typical pro-Putin oligarch, getting rich off looting the Russian state then utilizing that ill-gotten fortune to spread Russian influence around the globe. In this case, Blavatnik made almost 20 BILLION from the Russian oil/mining industries...

Fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers applauded as the team was sold for $2 billion, and cheered with each expensive new addition. Now the bill is coming due. And guess who is going to pay the price? Actually, you don't need to guess. The way baseball finds ways to separate fans from their money knows no bounds... At the heart of the issue is a new regional sports network that will pay the Dodgers $8.35 billion over the next 25 years. It was created by Time Warner Cable solely to broadcast the team's games, and it's the reason the new...

Earlier today, Comcast Cable announced that it agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable in a $45 billion mega-deal. What's in it for Comcast Cable shareholders? "This combination creates a company that delivers maximum value for our shareholders," said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. How are they going to do that? The company explains in one sentence that probably has every Comcast and Time Warner Cable employee nervous. "The transaction will generate approximately $1.5 billion in operating efficiencies and will be accretive to Comcast’s free cash flow per share while preserving balance sheet strength." "Operating efficiencies" usually means the closing and combining...

Comcast will announce a deal to acquire Time Warner Cable in an all-stock deal worth more than $45 billion that will unite the biggest and second largest cable television operators in the country, according to people briefed on the matter. . The surprise merger — expected to be announced on Thursday — is likely to bring to an end a protracted takeover battle that a smaller cable rival, Charter Communications, has been waging for Time Warner Cable, and will be the second major deal for Comcast in recent years to radically reshape the American media landscape.

Excerpted from "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA" Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past. It’s not news that the major US media are run by and for big business, or that the major media companies are themselves big businesses. Twenty years ago,...

Internet users from Brooklyn to Philadelphia suffered slow to nonexistent service Saturday after equipment at a New York-area network hub broke down, disrupting service for several hours. A spokesman for the Internet service provider Level 3 Communications Inc. LVLT +0.25% said technicians were working quickly to fix the outage, which cascaded down to customers using Cablevision Systems Corp.'s CVC -0.45% Optimum service and Time Warner Cable Inc., TWC -0.36% among others.

Time Warner Inc is planning to transfer its U.S. retirees from company-sponsored health plans and move them to private insurance exchanges. According to an August memo obtained by Reuters, the media company will make allocations to a Health Reimbursement Arrangement account for retirees to use towards the purchase of coverage on an exchange. Previously, Time Warner provided an indirect subsidy through a supplementary Medicare program.

Customers have been calling on Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp. to resolve their ongoing carriage dispute that has resulted in channels going dark in several markets including Los Angeles and New York. Now politicians are demanding an end to the blackout. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who recently won John F. Kerry's Senate seat, on Tuesday asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and restart negotiations.

Time Warner Cable's blackout of CBS continued Saturday, and neither side indicated a resolution of their dispute over fees is imminent. Time Warner dropped CBS Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other cities, leaving three million customers without the network's programs. The issue is fees that the cable company pays CBS to air its programs. Each has accused the other of making unreasonable demands ... The CBS stations that went dark are WCBS and WLNY in New York; KCBS and KCAL in Los Angeles; KTVT and KTXA in Dallas; WBZ and WSBK in Boston; KDKA, WPCW-CW in...

LOS ANGELES – Three million Time Warner Cable customers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas are losing the CBS channel, as the cable provider says it is dropping the network in a dispute over fees.

HONG KONG (CNNMoney) Pioneering Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera has acquired Current TV, and will use the network's wider distribution avenues to launch a new U.S.-based channel. The takeover will provide Al Jazeera with access to millions of U.S. households, a lucrative market the Qatar-based broadcaster has long coveted. The deal also means the end of Current, the low-rated channel co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Al Jazeera entered into an agreement to buy Al Gore's failing network Current TV. Hours later, as a result of the purchase, Time Warner Cable dropped the station with a message reading to viewers "This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable." According to multiple news sources, Current co-founder Joel Hyatt said in a statement that TWC dropped his TV network because TWC "did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera." “Current will no longer be carried on TWC," wrote Hyatt. "This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will...

Microsoft is pulling the plug on MSN TV, a service formerly known as WebTV, as Apple ramps up its set-top box efforts. The pioneering service, one of the first to offer Internet access via television sets, will shut down September 30, Microsoft revealed in an e-mail to subscribers and an FAQ posted to its Web site. WebTV, which was founded by Web entrepreneur Steve Perlman in 1996, was acquired by Microsoft for $425 million in 1997. …