Three cable operators have announced additions to their TV Everywhere services that let cable television subscribers stream certain cable networks from home computers and portable wireless devices.

Time Warner and Bright House are inching towards making their apps more useful with new deals that will allow viewing outside of the home. Unsurprisingly, Time Warner has managed to sign a deal with their potential new owner — Comcast/NBCUniversal —  that includes anywhere-viewing of live and on demand content from NBCUniversal’s suite of cable networks including USA Network, Syfy, Telemundo, Bravo, Oxygen, CNBC, MSNBC, mun2, NBC Sports Network, and Golf Channel, as well as local NBC and Telemundo-owned broadcast stations.

Since Time Warner Cable handles cable programming negotiations for Bright House Networks, both customers will receive the enhanced service.

Within the next few days, customers will have access to the NBC Sports Live Extra and Golf Live Extra services via apps on iOS and Android devices, as well as online. Access to the remaining broadcast and cable networks will become available to Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers starting in September, and continuing on an ongoing basis. Customers must verify their subscription to begin watching.

Unfortunately, there are only a handful of NBC-owned and operated broadcast stations across both companies’ service areas. In most cases, local affiliate stations are owned and operated by other corporate entities and will not be included in this deal.

Mediacom Communications has expanded its own TV Everywhere package, adding NFL Network and NFL RedZone this week, along with mobile access to FX, FXX, FX Movies, National Geographic and National Geographic Wild.

Mediacom now offers 40 channels for out-of-home viewing and plans to add FOX Sports Go and other popular sports networks by September.

“TV Everywhere allows Mediacom customers to always be connected to live entertainment and information,” said Mediacom senior vice president Ed Pardini. “Adding new channels to this service extends the value of a video subscription by giving customers more options to view their favorite programs when and where they want, whether that’s the big screen in living rooms or with the convenience of a mobile device.”

Mediacom customers looking for NFL Network and NFL RedZone on smartphones and tablets must download the free NFL Mobile App by going to the web site. Mediacom is now listed as a participating provider. Customers should log in with their Mediacom email address and username.

This week’s revelation that a Comcast-controlled enterprise deliberately and consciously removed news content critical of Comcast and its public policy lobbying practices speaks to the impact media concentration has on news dissemination.

It also exposes the close relationship Comcast maintains with non-profit groups it financially supports, encouraging the kinds of positive letters about its operations the New York Public Service Commission can now find on file in this case.[1]

The group involved in the current controversy reportedly received $350,000 from Comcast and promptly began a vocal opposition campaign against Net Neutrality, an open Internet policy Comcast still opposes being enacted as official FCC policy.[2]

Professor Todd Gitlin of Columbia University called Comcast’s close relationship with the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) the “closest thing I can imagine to a political quid pro quo. The fact NewsOne saw fit to delete a report that they previously posted without any claim that anything was mistaken in the report tells you something about their commitment to open discourse.”

Jeff Cohen, an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College, also commented on the NewsOne decision. “Just as corporate cash can corrupt civil rights groups, this incident shows how corporate power can corrupt and censor the news.”[3]

Time Warner Cable operates local news channels in most of the major New York cities it serves. These channels will also come under the umbrella of Comcast, giving it an even greater news voice through its NBC and Telemundo networks, MSNBC, local cable news operations, and owned and operated local broadcast affiliate stations in New York City.

In closing, as a reminder to the Commission, Comcast’s list of broadcast, cable and digital media assets is already enormous and will grow even larger if a merger with Time Warner Cable is approved.[4]

Comcast-NBCUniversal

Broadcast Television
NBC Television Network
NBC Entertainment
NBC News
NBC Sport Group
Universal Television (UTV)
Universal Cable Productions
NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution
NBCUniversal International Television Distribution

NBC Local Media Division
NBC New York (WNBC)
NBC Los Angeles (KNBC)
NBC Chicago (WMAQ)
NBC Philadelphia (WCAU)
NBC Bay Area (KNTV)
NBC Dallas/Fort Worth (KXAS)
NBC Washington (WRC)
NBC Miami (WTVJ)
NBC San Diego (KNSD)
NBC Connecticut (WVIT)
NBC Everywhere
LX TV
Skycastle Entertainment

Telemundo
KVEA (Los Angeles)
WNJU (New York)
WSCV (Miami)
KTMD (Houston)
WSNS (Chicago)
KXTX (Dallas/Fort Worth)
KVDA (San Antonio)
KSTS (San Francisco/San Jose)
KTAZ (Phoenix)
KNSO (Fresno)
KDEN (Denver)
KBLR (Las Vegas)
WNEU (Boston/Merrimack)
KHRR (Tucson)
WKAQ (Puerto Rico)
KWHY (Los Angeles) (Independent)

Television Channels
Bravo
Chiller
CNBC
CNBC World
Comcast Charter Sports Southeast
Comcast Sports Group
Comcast SportsNet Bay Area
Comcast SportsNet California
Comcast SportsNet Chicago
Comcast SportsNet Houston
Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic
Comcast SportsNet New England
Comcast SportsNet Northwest
Comcast SportsNet Philadelhpia
SNY
The Mtn.-Mountain West Sports Network
CSS
Comcast Sports Southwest
New England Cable News (Manages)
NBC Sports Network
The Comcast Network
E! Entertainment Television
G4
Golf Channel
MSNBC
mun2
Oxygen Media
Cloo
Sprout
The Style Network
Syfy
Universal HD
USA Network
The Weather Channel Companies
Syfy Universal (Universal Networks International)
Diva Universal (Universal Networks International)
Studio Universal (Universal Networks International)
Universal Channel (Universal Networks International)
13th Street Universal (Universal Networks International)
Movies 24 (Universal Networks International)
Hallmark Channel (non-U.S.) (Universal Networks International)
KidsCo (Interest) (Universal Networks International)

Film
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
Universal Studios Home Entertainment

Parks and Resorts
Universal Parks and Resorts

Digital Media
DailyCandy
Fandango
Hulu (32%)
iVillage
NBC.com
CNBC Digital
Plaxo

Communications
XFINITY TV
XFINITY Internet
XFINITY Voice

Sports Management
Comcast-Spectator
Philadelphia Flyers
Wells Fargo Center
Global Spectrum (Public Assembly Management)
Ovations Food Services
Front Row Marketing Services
Paciolan
New Era Tickets (ComcastTIX)
Flyers Skate Zone

Other
Comcast Ventures, which is invested in numerous companies.

Time Warner Cable

Local channels`
Time Warner Cable News[5]
NY1: Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island
NY1 Noticias: Spanish language news for New York City
NY State of Politics Blog
TWC News Capital Region (Albany, Amsterdam, Saratoga and Berkshire counties)
TWC News Central NY (Syracuse, Ithaca/Cortland, Utica/Rome)
TWC News Hudson Valley
TWC News Northern NY (Watertown/Ft. Drum)
TWC News Southern Tier (Elmira/Corning, Binghamton/Oneonta)
TWC News Western NY (Buffalo, Finger Lakes Region, Jamestown, Rochester, and Batavia)

Regional Sports Networks
Metro Sports
Time Warner Cable Sports
Time Warner Cable SportsNet
Time Warner Cable Deportes
TWC Sports 32
SNY

Other Holdings
Adelphia — former cable television company in PA
NaviSite — cloud and hosting services company
Insight Communications — cable operator
DukeNet Communications — Fiber optic network
Time Warner Cable Internet
Time Warner Cable Media (advertising)

—

[1]http://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/MatterManagement/CaseMaster.aspx?MatterCaseNo=14-m-0183

[2]http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/06/06/12769/civil-rights-groups-fcc-positions-reflect-industry-funding-critics-say

[3]http://www.republicreport.org/2014/comcast-affiliated-newsite-censored-my-article-about-net-neutrality-lobbying/

[4]https://archives.cjr.org/resources/index.php

[5]http://spectrumlocalnews.com/

The head of the country’s largest Spanish-language television network Univision said on Monday that Comcast’s proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable could be “bad for Hispanic audiences.”

Univision President Randy Falco told Wall Street analysts that the combined cable company would serve 91 percent of all Latino households and be the dominant distributor of multichannel programming in 19 of the 20 largest Spanish-language television markets.

“We are hoping at the very least there is that scrutiny and potentially much tougher restrictions added to the existing [Comcast-NBCUniversal] consent decree that will protect Comcast competitors such as Univision who are serving minority communities in particular,” said Falco.

Although Falco did not directly oppose the merger, he did express concern that Comcast would not treat independent Spanish language networks like Univision as well as NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo network. Falco noted Comcast has refused to carry Univision’s sports network. Time Warner Cable does.

“Either Comcast doesn’t understand that soccer is a passion point for Hispanics or they don’t support competitors who have competing services,” Falco said. “My fear is that the latter is the case and this type of anti-competitive conduct would continue.”

Falco is among the first media executives to publicly criticize the merger. Critics of the deal say programmers are keeping quiet fearing future retaliation from Comcast.

If you have started to confuse the Washington Post editorial page with that of the Wall Street Journal, you are not alone.

Under the stewardship of Fred Hiatt, WaPo’s editorial opinions have grown increasingly anti-consumer and pro-corporate at home and decidedly neoconservative abroad.

It’s the same newspaper that wholeheartedly supported the merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal in 2010. Let’s check whether they called that one right:

Entities that compete with NBC-owned cable channels fear that Comcast will relegate them to hard-to-find channel locations. Consumer advocates warn that Comcast will use its newfound power to raise subscription rates and stifle new voices on television and the Internet.

The same newspaper reported last week that Comcast refused to let Back9Network, a golf oriented network in direct competition with Comcast-owned Golf Channel, on its cable systems.

For years, Bloomberg TV — in direct competition with Comcast-owned CNBC — has been stuck in Channel Siberia, in some areas like Chicago dumped between Comcast’s promotional “barker” channel and “Leased Access.” CNBC enjoys Ch. 29, certain to attract more viewers than Bloomberg’s Ch. 102.

As Stop the Cap! reported yesterday, no cable company raises cable television rates more than Comcast, blaming programming rate increases that in several cases originate with Comcast-owned cable networks.

Regulators should scrutinize the proposed merger but should be skeptical of the critics’ claims. […] Advocacy groups have been poor prognosticators of the effects of large media mergers.

The Washington Post’s editorial accuracy record has more than a few blemishes, from its 2003 declaration Colin Powell’s “evidence” of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was “irrefutable,” to suggestions that a wedding of Comcast and NBC Universal wouldn’t hurt anyone because the FCC was ready to manage any problems without pesky mandates or overbearing pre-conditions.

The FCC already requires cable operators to deal fairly with competitors. Its rules would require Comcast to give competitors access to NBC content on “reasonable” and “non-discriminatory” terms. The company would also be required to negotiate in good faith about carrying non-NBC channels. Competitors who believed that they were harmed by unfair dealing could have their complaints adjudicated by the agency. Critics of the Comcast-NBCU merger claim that these mechanisms are ineffective and slow. But the breakdown of the complaint system should not be used as an excuse to impose onerous conditions on one company. Instead, critics should push for an overhaul of the system.

The Bloomberg case, now three years old, remains unresolved. That should tell readers something about just how quickly the FCC gets around to dealing with these kinds of complaints. Comcast has been able to argue its decision to bury Bloomberg and keep Back9Network off its cable systems are examples of ‘good faith, reasonable decision-making that doesn’t discriminate.’ It sued to quash Net Neutrality, critical for online video competition, and won.

The Post editorial amusingly insists that Comcast’s merger plans should not be interrupted because of an ineffective complaint system that can’t or won’t promptly deal with Comcast’s ongoing abuse of the very non-discriminatory rules the editors declare as a reason to support the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger.

Many of the same fears of domination and manipulation were raised with the 2001 merger of AOL and TimeWarner; that megadeal crumbled after a few years. Comcast and GE, which will retain a 49 percent stake in NBCU, should be allowed to proceed, and regulators should do their jobs and watch the newly formed company carefully.

Phillip “The Post’s Naivete is Showing” Dampier

The 2001 merger of AOL and Time Warner came at the last gasp of the dot.com boom. As the New York Times noted, “In May of 2000, the dot.com bubble began to burst and online advertising began to slow, making it difficult for AOL to meet the financial forecasts on which the deal was based. The world began moving quickly to high-speed Internet access, putting AOL’s ubiquitous dial-up service in jeopardy.”

The final unraveling of AOL Time Warner came about because the combined company, highly dependent on AOL (and its stock value), could not sustain its business model when nobody could figure out how to get paid for content in the online world. AOL’s dial-up Internet access business was also rapidly in decline as the country started moving towards broadband.

“The consumer has access to everything and now it’s going to be on a handheld device, so what I call the rolling thunder of the Internet started actually to eat its own, which was AOL,” writes the Times. “AOL was the Google of its time. It was how you got to the Internet, but it was using some old media business ideas that were undone by the Internet itself, and that’s why Google came along.”

The same sad story is not true for Comcast or Time Warner Cable (which was spun off from Time Warner, Inc. as an independent company as part of a restructuring in 2009.)

Both cable companies are in a better place than AOL-Time Warner:

• AOL relied on dial-up and reseller access to some broadband providers — neither sufficiently lucrative to sustain AOL’s dot.com-days value. Comcast/TWC own their own broadband networks;
• Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse are the only significant multi-city broadband competitors for the cable industry. U-verse remains challenged by its technological limitations and Verizon stopped expanding FiOS. Google Fiber has a totally insignificant market share and is likely to stay that way for several years. Google Fiber provides no competition in the northeast where Comcast and Time Warner Cable dominate;
• Comcast and Time Warner Cable both oppose community-owned broadband competition and Time Warner has successfully managed to push legislation virtually banning network expansion in several states;
• Comcast will both own and control the pipes and a significant amount of the content that crosses its broadband networks. At the time of the AOL-Time Warner merger, online video competition did not exist in a meaningful way.

Franken

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has turned over much of his campaign website to expressing concern about the merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast.

Franken has maintained a comparatively low profile since arriving in the U.S. Senate and rarely grants interviews to reporters outside of Minnesota, but after the announced $45 billion merger deal between the two largest cable companies in the country, he started making exceptions.

Franken has repeatedly tangled with Comcast, the dominant cable operator in his home state, since being elected. He favors Net Neutrality/Open Internet policies, strongly opposed Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, and believes cable rates are too high and service quality is too low.

Although the senator claims he remains undecided about the merger, his public comments suggest he is likely going to oppose the deal.

“We need more competition, not less,” said Franken, who mocked Comcast’s claim that the two cable companies never compete with each other. “This is going exactly in the wrong direction. Consumers, I am very concerned, are going to pay higher bills and get even worse service and less choice.”

Although the merger will leave the combined company serving nearly one in three households, Comcast says it plans to keep its total nationwide broadband market share under 30%. But Franken points out Comcast isn’t just a cable company. It also owns a major television network and has ownership interests in nearly three dozen cable networks and television stations around the country — many in America’s largest cities.

Franken mass e-mailed his campaign supporters to express concern about the current state of the cable and broadband business and asked consumers what they thought about their cable company. More than 60,000 have shared their mostly negative views so far.

Minnesota Public Radio takes a closer look at why Sen. Al Franken is interested in the merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast. Feb. 24, 2014 (4:32)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

That may prove to be smart politics for Franken, seen as a polarizing figure in the left-right divide. The near-universal loathing among consumers for both Comcast and Time Warner Cable threaten to rise above traditional partisan politics. Republican lawmakers have kept largely quiet about the merger deal, and some are even openly questioning it. Franken may tapped into a re-election issue that voters across Minnesota are likely to support — especially older Republican-leaning independents.

Franken claims his survey is trying to level the playing field by getting consumers involved in the issue. For Washington regulators accustomed to only hearing from company lobbyists and various third party groups often financially tied to merger advocates, it could be a game-changer.

Comcast’s connections in Washington are legendary. Former Republican FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker wasted no time taking a job as a senior Comcast lobbyist shortly after voting in favor of Comcast’s buyout of NBCUniversal. Former Republican FCC chairman Michael Powell today heads the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the cable industry’s largest lobbying group and supporter of the merger.

The merger deal’s regulatory review will be conducted by current FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler, a past president of the NCTA and former cable and wireless industry lobbyist. Bill Baer is in charge of the Antitrust Division that will examine the merger at the U.S. Department of Justice. His last job was leading the law firm that represented NBC in support of the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Al Franken Talks With CNN About TWC-Comcast Merger 2-13-14.flv[/flv]

Sen. Al Franken spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month about the Time Warner Cable-Comcast merger. Tapper admitted he dropped Comcast because he was dissatisfied with their service. (7:45)