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JPL
Premium Member
join:2007-04-04
Downingtown, PA

JPL to mikesterr

Premium Member

to mikesterr

Re: How exactly?

said by mikesterr:

While I agree they don't directly over lap coverage areas, I seem to remember that each municipality has a specific contract with a particular Cable operator. Periodically those contracts come up for renewal, so in the case of a Cable merger the Townships now have less choices for their particular town. That being said I don't think I have ever heard of a town kicking the incumbent provider out.

No... this isn't correct at all. A number of years ago, our market was served by a small cable outfit called Suburban Cable. They were the only cable operator in the region because they had the franchise agreement. What happened to Suburban? They got bought out by Comcast. How many cable operators did we have before the buy-out? One. How many did we have AFTER the buy-out? One. You're just changing hands... that's all. Now that doesn't mean that you won't hate the new owners of the cable system in your area. You may. But it does nothing to decrease or increase competition.

Now you can argue that if a town wants to go fishing for a new cable company that this move makes it more difficult. And that would be true, to a point. The point being that I can't think of a single case where that's happened. I'm sure it does, but in this age of TV competition, it's far more likely that a town just opens up their franchising agreements to allow others in.

mmainprize
join:2001-12-06
Houghton Lake, MI

mmainprize

Member

The point he was making is, if you have 100 company's provide cable service and all trying to expand then you will have more markets that do overlap and more competition.
If 50 of the company's are bought out by the others, there is 50% less chance of more competition or overlap in more markets.