The City of Philadelphia yesterday released a 571-page report assessing Comcast’s service, and the cable company is not taking the report’s criticism lying down.
“We appreciate some of the positive conclusions in the consultant’s report, but overall believe many of the findings are inaccurate, over-stated, or misleading, and we will deliver comprehensive proof of those facts to the City,” Comcast executives LeAnn Talbot and David Cohen wrote in a post titled, “A Philadelphia Love Story.”
Comcast’s headquarters are in Philadelphia, but in some respects the company provides worse service to its hometown than to other major cities, according to the community needs assessment and system technical review conducted by consulting firm CBG Communications. Comcast’s 15-year cable television franchise agreement with Philadelphia expires later this year. It authorizes the company to use public rights-of-way in order to operate cable service.
Tag: David Cohen
Comcast Deeply Offended By Claims It Pays People To Support Its Merger
Comcast has consistently crowed about the volume of individuals and organizations that support the company’s $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable. Of course the company has just as consistently failed to mention how much of this “support” is from people paid to regurgitate pretty much any Comcast dreck-filled missive that comes stumbling down the road. Want funding for a new events center or a “closing the digital divide” photo op? Just leave independent thought at the door and send lawmakers a pre-written form letter with your name or organization’s logo on it.
It doesn’t take much sleuthing to uncover the money trail, because Comcast (and the politicians and groups beholden to it) usually (with some think tank exceptions) don’t bother hiding it. They just outright deny that the money impacts policy positions whatsoever. For example, take reports this week that clearly highlight how Comcast can effectively buy a media sound wall of merger support, then pretend there’s nothing untoward about an army of “consultants,” minority groups, and fauxcademics all paid to effectively be glorified parrots:
“Increased Concentration Does Not Equal Anticompetitive Effect,” Mr. Manne wrote last August, summarizing his submission. He separately wrote pieces in Wired magazine, extolling the virtues of the deal, and through a separate advocacy organization he helps run, called TechFreedom, wrote a blog post that appeared the same day that the deal was announced early last year. Each time, he praised the transaction. But nowhere in these statements does Mr. Manne directly disclose that Comcast is among a small group of donors that finances his nonprofit group, a fact that Mr. Manne confirmed in response to a question late last week. “We are no value to our donors or ourselves unless we maintain our independence and academic rigor,” he said, before adding that “maybe there is some subconscious thing there.”
Yes, surely Comcast’s cash comes associated not with an expectation that you’ll give automated and artificial justification to what’s frequently very anti-consumer and anti-competitive policies, but that you’ll exercise your “independence and academic rigor” and tell Comcast to piss off when you’re approached to help “correct perceptions” about the latest Comcast PR campaign. You see there’s nothing untoward going on here — because we say there’s nothing untoward going on here. We’re all just healthy American patriots busy expressing our First Amendment rights, after all.
That logic was mirrored by Comcast’s top lobbyist David Cohen — who calls himself the company’s “Chief Diversity Officer” to help skirt lobbying rules (I bring that up every time I write about Cohen because to me it just never gets old). Cohen says he’s “offended” by the very idea that Comcast has to pay for its policy support:
“He did not dispute that many of the voices supporting the deal received donations from Comcast. But he said he was offended by the suggestion that their endorsements had been made in return for the financial help. “We have never provided financial support to an organization in exchange for support in a transaction,” he said. “Our support is based on the quality of the work they do in the community.”
Now I’m sure that somewhere there exists a person that actually believes that, but I’d recommend not putting them in charge of your finances (or even lawn care). In Mr. Cohen’s head, this is just another conspiracy contributing to the unfair overall “atmospherics” of anti-Comcast sentiment:
“The atmospherics around our customer service clearly stir some antipathy among some consumers,” Mr. Cohen said. “And it does provide a basis for opponents of the transaction to gin up three-sentence, nonsubstantive communications to the F.C.C. saying that they don’t like Comcast or they don’t like Time Warner Cable.”
That’s a company with arguably the worst customer satisfaction ratings in any industry — one that manufactures support for bad policies out of thin air — trying to claim its horrible reputation is somehow manufactured. It’s still not clear if regulators plan to deny the merger (or approve it with something vaguely-resembling meaningful conditions), but whatever happens it will spell the end of some fantastic entertainment that easily tops anything in Comcast’s channel lineup.
Comcast: Merger to bring “$8 billion in price reductions” to businesses
I think DoomHamster sums it up nicely:
So is merging with TWC the only way they can enter that market? And if TWC is already in that market, how would Comcast merging with them increase the competition?
Seems to me that the better option for increasing competition would be for Comcast to enter the market along side TWC and all the other that are there.
What am I missing?
From Ars Technica:
When Comcast announced its proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Executive VP David Cohen bluntly said that Comcast is “not promising that customer bills are going to go down or even increase less rapidly.”
But while residential customers shouldn’t expect any financial relief from the nation’s largest cable company, Comcast now says the merger will create new competition in the business market, lowering prices, especially for large, multi-city businesses. In areas including San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Boston, and Philadelphia, “we expect to generate almost $8 billion in price reductions due to our competitive entry in the enterprise business segment through the TWC transaction,” Comcast Business President Bill Stemper wrote in a blog post yesterday.
Comcast provided some details on how it calculated the expected price reductions in a filing last month with the Federal Communications Commission, though the numbers in that document are redacted. Comcast calculated cost savings over a 10-year period for enterprise customers, meaning multi-location businesses with at least 500 employees, the filing said. There will be “various cost savings and other benefits” for small businesses too, the filing said.
Despite Throwing Money At Congress, Comcast Finds Merger Support Hard To Come By
Poor Comcast. Despite throwing millions of dollars at think tanks, consultants, PR reps, editorial writers, various front groups and a myriad of other policy tendrils, genuine, meaningful support for the company’s $45 billion Time Warner Cable acquisition is still apparently hard to come by. You might recall that last year top Comcast lobbyist “Chief Diversity Officer” David Cohen proudly crowed that support for the company’s merger was “pouring in” — though he failed to mention that Comcast was paying people for that support, and that said support largely consisted of regurgitated form letters.
Despite the money spent however, it appears that actual support in Congress for the deal is tepid to non-existent. Comcast’s hometown paper the Philadelphia Inquirer points out that whereas the NBC deal saw major support efforts by members of Congress, politicians appear to want nothing to do with this latest merger attempt