Gov. Cuomo

Does N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo support or reject the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable and why has an administration official been meeting behind closed doors with the companies involved?

If the merger is successful, more than 95 percent of upstate New York will be served by a single cable operator – Comcast, with little chance Verizon will mount a major challenge for video, broadband, and phone service customers outside of the areas where FiOS fiber upgrades have been announced. Although the Cuomo Administration promised an in-depth investigation into the merger, the governor has kept his own views close to the vest and has not publicly supported or opposed the transaction. But an administration official has met privately with executives of both cable companies and state regulators behind closed doors according to a new report.

According to public schedules obtained by Capital, Comcast representatives met at least three times in August with PSC members or staff in what one former commissioner called unusual circumstances.

James Larocca, a N.Y. PSC commissioner from 2008-2013, said it is not typical for officials from the governor’s office to meet with state regulators and cable executives in the same closed-door meeting.

“I did not meet with the second floor on pending matters and I’m not aware that other commissioners ever did,” Larocca said.

It is not unusual for companies with business before the Commission to meet with its staff or commissioners in ex parte conversations to set the parameters of hearings, filings, and other regulatory proceedings. All such meetings appear to have been properly disclosed by the PSC staff and the companies involved. But the fact some were held behind closed doors with a Cuomo Administration official and without public disclosure of the subjects discussed bothers some.

Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, said what was discussed behind closed doors should be disclosed so the public can see what top state officials are saying to the cable executives.

“There are questions as to whether the PSC is a strong enough advocate for the people or the industry,” Lerner told Capital. “The agency has lost sight of its initial mission, which is to serve the public in regulating these absolutely essential services.”

Gerald Norlander at the Public Utility Law Project ponders what would happen if there were two negotiating tables discussing the merger, one public and the other secret.

“If there is a second table where views are exchange and negotiations are occurring, it doesn’t do well for transparency,” he said.

Public statements from both Comcast and the Cuomo Administration did little to clear the air.

“It was an initial meeting to discuss the public interest benefits of the transaction for New York,” a Comcast representative said in a one-sentence statement in response to questions about the meeting.

Not exactly, says the Cuomo Administration.

“The meeting was to explain the new law, the PSC’s new powers and its expanded oversight,” Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said.

As has been the case during much of the merger debate, Time Warner Cable has remained silent and has refused to comment.

The governor himself has avoided taking sides, claiming he will abide by the recommendations made by the PSC. But if true, why involve the governor’s office in the merger or meet privately with either the PSC or the companies involved?

“The state is taking a hands-on review of this merger to ensure that New Yorkers benefit,” Cuomo said in May. “The Public Service Commission’s actions will help protect consumers by demanding company commitments to strong service quality, affordability, and availability.”

Cuomo himself has received at least $200,000 in campaign contributions from Comcast and Time Warner Cable. With customer satisfaction scores for both Comcast and Time Warner Cable in the basement, lobbying has been a necessity and Time Warner Cable is one of the state’s top lobbying forces, spending $500,000 of its subscribers’ money in New York in 2013 alone. Comcast spent $60,000, despite only serving a small sliver of customers in downstate New York.

The two companies also donated a combined $500,000 to a secretive state Democratic party account which Cuomo controls. Ironically, some of that money was used to run ads celebrating Gov. Cuomo’s efforts to get money out of politics.

New York Democratic candidate Zephyr Teachout is seeking to oust Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the fall election. One of the issues she is campaigning on is Cuomo’s significant contributions from Comcast and Time Warner Cable and his apparent lack of interest in stopping the merger. At a campaign stop in Syracuse, Teachout claims Comcast will raise your rates and offer no significant benefits to New Yorkers. She’d strongly oppose the merger and media consolidation in general, if elected. WRVO Radio reports. Aug. 29, 2014 (1:26)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Teachout

Cuomo’s Democratic primary opponent Zephyr Teachout and her running mate, Tim Wu (who coined the term “Net Neutrality”) are less murky on the issue. Both strongly oppose the merger and cable industry consolidation generally and have expressed serious concern about the governor’s acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from both Time Warner Cable and Comcast.

Andrew Letson’s Politics Blog considers the differences between the two campaigns striking.

“It’s a sharp contrast – between the hypocritical man in office taking money from corporate interests and the candidates with integrity who are funding their campaign through largely individual donors,” Letson writes.

“[Both Wu and Teachout] have said that they would work to block the frightening Comcast-Time Warner merger, something that’s certainly on the minds of many New Yorkers,” says Letson. “What’s nice about that is that New York actually has a lot of power when it comes to this merger, so opposition from both the governor and lieutenant governor would go a long way.”

Letson is a Teachout campaign volunteer, so it is no surprise which candidate he supports.

Although Charter Communications did not succeed in its bid to assume control of Time Warner Cable, it isn’t crying about its loss to Comcast either.

Greg Maffei, president and CEO of Liberty Media Corp., which has very close ties to John Malone, former cable magnate, says if the merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable is approved, it will start a race to merge the rest of the cable industry into just a handful of cable operators serving almost the entire country.

Comcast’s argument is that since it does not compete with Time Warner Cable, there are no antitrust or anti-competitive reasons why it should not be allowed to buy Time Warner Cable. If state and federal regulators believe that, nothing precludes a company like Charter (Liberty has an ownership interest in the cable company) snapping up every other cable operator in the country. In fact, Charter has signaled consolidation is precisely its intention, alerting investors it intends to play a very aggressive role in mergers and acquisitions once it sees what regulators feel about the Comcast-Time Warner deal.

Likely targets for Charter include:

• Atlantic Broadband
• CableONE
• Cablevision
• Mediacom
• Midcontinent Communications

Cox remains privately held and Bright House Networks is tied up in contractual obligations with Time Warner Cable.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Maffei Charter Is Logical Acquirer of Cable Assets 8-6-14.flv[/flv]

Greg Maffei, president and chief executive officer of Liberty Media Corp., talks about the outlook for Charter Communications Inc. and the cable industry. Speaking with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop,” Maffei also discusses the decision by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc. to withdraw its $75 billion takeover bid for Time Warner Inc. (5:40)

Comcast has repeatedly touted its rating from J.D. Power & Associates claiming the company has been cited for the most improvement of any cable operator scored by the survey firm. That isn’t saying very much when one takes a closer look.

In fact, since 2010 Comcast has achieved very little improvement in its abysmal score. J.D. Power & Associates reports that over the last four years, Comcast has only managed to boost its TV satisfaction score 92 points and Internet satisfaction 77 points… on a 1,000-point scale.[1]

Comcast also continues to have below-average scores in all four regions for both television and broadband, with the exception of Internet service in the north-central region, where it faces competition from DSL offered by telephone company CenturyLink.

Other consumer satisfaction surveys are far less charitable to Comcast.

Consumer Reports ranked Comcast 15^th out of 17 large cable companies and called their service and customer relations mediocre. In a survey conducted in April, the consumer group found 56% of the public opposed to the merger, 11% supported it, and 32% offered no opinion. The survey found 74% believing the merger will result in higher prices and fewer choices for consumers.[2]

“A merger combining these two huge companies would give Comcast even greater control over the cable and broadband Internet markets, leading to higher prices, fewer choices, and worse customer service for consumers,” Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel in Consumers Union’s D.C. office, said in a statement.[3]

Nearly every year, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts acknowledges the problems with customer service and promises improvements.[4] But according to the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, those improvements never arrive. Perhaps they need the expertise of professionals like those virtual assistants to turn things around.

In 2004, ACSI noted it added cable television to its index in 2000, and since that time, “customer satisfaction has gone from bad to worse, and there is no improvement in sight:”[5]

Among cable providers, Time Warner has the highest score of 60. Both Comcast and Charter Communications register at 56. For the private as well as public sector, including the IRS, this is the lowest level of customer satisfaction of any organization in ACSI. Consumer complaints are also much more common relative to any other measured industry. Almost half of all cable customers have registered complaints about one thing or another.

When buyers have meaningful choice alternatives, this level of customer (dis)satisfaction is neither competitive nor sustainable. Cable is the only industry to score below 60 in ACSI. With the satellite companies removed, the weighted average for the cable industry is 59.

Under normal competitive conditions, there would be mass customer defections. The reason this is not the case for the cable industry is due to local monopoly power, which means that in most markets, the dissatisfied customer has nowhere to go.

In 2007, ACSI foreshadows what a merger between two giant cable companies is likely to mean for customers as the two companies eventually attempt to integrate their disparate computer systems and management:[6]

After a minor gain in 2006, the first ever for the industry, satisfaction among subscribers to cable and satellite TV service drops 2% to 62, the lowest level of customer satisfaction among all industries covered by ACSI.  None of the providers has improved on customer satisfaction this year.  Comcast (down 7% to 56), DirecTV (down 6% to 67) and Time Warner Cable (down 5% to 58) tumble.  High system loads causing problems with reliability and pricing were major culprits.  Both Comcast and Time Warner have acquired many new subscribers in their deal to divide up troubled cable provider Adelphia Communications – integrating these acquisitions often leads to short-term problems with customer satisfaction.

In 2008, things deteriorated further for Comcast customers, according to this ACSI assessment:[7]

Comcast is down 4% to 54, an all-time low for the largest cable provider in the country. Rapid growth may have contributed to difficulties in operations as Comcast continues to add cable subscribers, often through acquisitions of companies in smaller markets.

[…] As is often the case, small is often better in terms of being able to provide good customer service. Cablevision, for example, with some 3 million subscribers, is barely 1/8th the size of Comcast. These companies don’t generally seek to expand quickly beyond their geographic footprints and are often targets of acquisition by larger firms, companies that may be able to withstand depressed customer satisfaction in the short term as operations of the smaller providers are integrated.

This year, both Comcast and Time Warner Cable fell even further according to ACSI:[8]

Cable giants Comcast and Time Warner Cable have the most dissatisfied customers. Comcast falls 5% to 60, while Time Warner registers the biggest loss and plunges 7% to 56, its lowest score to date.

“Comcast and Time Warner assert their proposed merger will not reduce competition because there is little overlap in their service territories,” says David VanAmburg, ACSI Director. “Still, it’s a concern whenever two poor-performing service providers combine operations. ACSI data consistently show that mergers in service industries usually result in lower customer satisfaction, at least in the short term. It’s hard to see how combining two negatives will be a positive for consumers.”

ACSI also scored Internet Service Providers this year and found even worse news:[9]

High prices, slow data transmission and unreliable service drag satisfaction to record lows, as customers have few  alternatives beyond the largest Internet service providers. Customer satisfaction with ISPs drops 3.1% to 63, the lowest score in the Index.

[…] Cable-company-controlled ISPs languish at the bottom of the rankings again. Cox Communications is the best of these and stays above the industry average despite a 6% fall to 64. Customers rate Comcast (-8% to 57) and Time Warner Cable (-14% to 54) even lower for Internet service than for their TV service. In both industries, the two providers have the weakest customer satisfaction.

Comcast claims the transaction will allow the two companies to invest in their networks, improve customer service with a topnotch phone answering service, and enhance the products available to Time Warner Cable customers.

In reality, Comcast’s largest investment will be in a $17 billion share buyback to benefit their stockholders.[10] Time Warner Cable’s current CEO has secured for himself a golden parachute package of $78 million dollars for just two months on the job as CEO of Time Warner Cable.[11]

With that kind of money on the table, it is no surprise Comcast has invested in 76 lobbyists from 24 different lobbying firms and is spending millions trying to convince regulators, including the NY PSC that this transaction is a good deal for New York. The more than 2,700 New Yorkers that have filed comments with the PSC, largely in strong opposition to this merger, disagree. Their voices should speak louder than out of state groups that have been urged by Comcast to send letters supporting this transaction.

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[1]http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/comcast-time-warner-cable-remain-among-most-hated-tv-providers-survey-1201145921/

[2]http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/comcast-time-warner-cable-merger-poll-shows-majority-oppose-1201224277/

[3]http://consumersunion.org/

[4]http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-CEO-Makes-His-Yearly-Promise-to-Improve-Customer-Service-128206

[5]http://www.theacsi.org/component/content/article/30-commentary-category/86-acsi-quarterly-commentaries-q1-2004

[6]http://www.theacsi.org/component/content/article/30-commentary-category/169-acsi-quarterly-commentaries-q1-2007

[7]http://www.theacsi.org/component/content/article/30-commentary-category/179-acsi-quarterly-commentaries-q1-2008

[8]http://www.theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/press-2014/press-release-telecommunications-and-information-2014

[9]http://www.theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/press-2014/press-release-telecommunications-and-information-2014

[10]http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/02/comcast_agrees_to_purchase_of.html

[11]http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/20/four-months-as-time-warner-cables-ceo--80-million/6658083/