Mergers Like Comcast-Time Warner Are NEVER Good For Customers

When one massive corporation merges with another massive corporation, the result is never good for customers. The spinmeisters can say what they will, but these mergers are not done to benefit customers, instead they are done to service greed. This is the capitalist formula: Grow, and grow some more, and then when it seems there’s no more growth potential, do whatever you can to grow yet again. And for many very large companies, it is the merger that has allowed them to continue to appease those shareholders. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts calls this a “pro-consumer” merger. “The combination of Time Warner Cable and Comcast creates an exciting opportunity for our company, for our customers and for our shareholders,” said Roberts in a media conference call. But that is a lie, as mergers like Comcast-Time Warner do not lead to lower prices and higher competition, they lead to the exact opposite, and that is hardly “exciting” for customers. But he is right about one thing, this is exactly what the shareholders want. These mergers are not about doing right by the customer, they are about doing right by the shareholders, and that includes top executive compensation.

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House of Cards Review: Frank Underwood’s Insatiable Hunger For Power

In one of Frank Underwood’s many asides, delivered with great aplomb by Kevin Spacey, he breaks the fourth wall to say, “Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries.” Those two sentences capture the essence of the main character and great antihero of a dark, almost sinister political drama.

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The Americans: FX’s Cold War Drama Delivers

If one thing is clear after two episodes of FX’s new 80s-era drama, the quality of scripted television has never been better. The Americans, created by CIA officer turned screenwriter, Joe Weisberg, is a cold war drama about covert Soviet KGB officers living as American citizens. The show stars Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings and Matthew Rhys as Phillip Jennings. They are a married couple with two children and living the American dream in 1981, they also happen to be Soviet KGB agents.

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Netflix’s Duplicitous Actions

Qwikster - A Netflix companyTwo months ago Netflix announced a new pricing strategy that was met with near universal derision. The result was a 60% price hike for customers who were using the most popular DVD and streaming package. Their reasoning for this change was vague at best and that’s because it was a cold and calculated business decision. But was this decision made in a vacuum, ignoring the customers that made Netflix a success?

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