First of all, allow me to apologise for the recent week-and-a-half of downtime. Storm Darwin took out my phone line. Seemingly, while my connectivity with the outside world was a lot more tenuous than what I'm used to, Comcast announced that it wanted to merge with Time Warner Cable. It's not my prerogative to complain. I don't live in America and am not particularly affected by its telecoms market, though I was startled to learn that I have faster broadband than 66% of America (I do now, that is :-P ). Besides, the last week has seen more than enough complaints about this thing on various sites. All I wish to do is share a few humorous/ironic observations of my own, which I have been formulating during this extensive downtime.
The torch of "The Octopus" has finally been passed
It's no secret that Comcast owns Universal Studios. Even when their shareholding was only a controlling 51% stake, the 2012 Universal logo announced to the world for the first time that it was "A COMCAST COMPANY".
The 2012 Universal logo
In the olden days, Universal was owned by the MCA conglomerate, which I discussed last June in my "Sausage Factories" post. Before MCA owned Universal, it was the largest talent agency in the United States of America. With its shady dealings and relentless buying-up of other agencies, it earned the title of "The Octopus". The agency was dissolved when the company took control of Universal, because of antitrust concerns, among other things.
However, MCA and Universal became more and more closely associated over the years, with the Universal name eventually replacing "MCA" altogether at the hands of Edgar Bronfman Junior. Now, it can be said that Comcast owns what is left of the original MCA, and it is now seemingly vying for the title of "The Octopus" of cable operators, rather than "The Octopus" of talent agencies.
Maybe...
One less confusing brand-name on the market
Well, whatever about the implications for competition of this particular deal, I'm glad someone is getting rid of the Time Warner Cable name. From the information available, one would be forgiven for thinking that two of the "Big Three" music companies were about to merge. We have Universal Music, which looks like it is owned by the same company as Universal Studios. We also have Warner Music, which looks like it is owned by the same company as Warner Bros., which is Time Warner. Time Warner Cable also looks like it is owned by the same company.
None of this is true, however. Both Warner Music and Universal Music separated from their respective film studios a decade ago. Time Warner Cable separated from Time Warner half a decade ago. Unfortunately, trademarks are licensed. They all get to keep using each other's names, under the terms of some obscure agreements. One needs look no further than the comments on this Techdirt post about the lawsuit against Warner/Chappell Music over "Happy Birthday" to see the confusion caused by this.
Therefore, I sincerely hope that Comcast will not renew their trademark licence once the deal comes through, so that this nonsense can finally start coming to an end.
The NBC Peacock finally gets an eye?
Peacocks have fake eyes in their plumage. The well-known NBC Peacock, however, seems to be an exception.
vs. 
What about Time Warner Cable though? That weird Celtic-esque graphic that it uses as a logo surely qualifies as an eye:
What if Comcast got rid of the Time Warner brand, but kept the logo in some way? Would the NBC Peacock finally get something resembling an eye?
Perhaps needs a bit more polish…
So anyway, that's my two cent on this Comcast-TWC thing!