Psychonalyzing Comcast

[Commentary] To Comcast’s Brian Roberts, the acquisition of Time Warner Cable was all about remaking the cable bundle for the digital age. It was all about continuing to use distribution (i.e., the cable system) to get leverage over content, however much the marriage of content and distribution renders Comcast suspect in the eyes of hyperbolic regulators, customers and business partners. By joining the two cable systems, the deal would give Comcast a fair approximation of national scale to match the national scale of Netflix, Apple, HBO, etc. It would be able to use its 30 million cable homes as leverage over sports leagues, movie studios and cable channels to build up its own Internet TV package in competition with Netflix and other Web-based TV purveyors. As he walked away from the deal, Roberts said, “This allows us to think again.” Now whether there is a way ahead that makes both business sense and allows the Roberts family to enlarge their role on the national stage is a different question.