OUTFOXED - Comcast purchase Sky

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NickSCFC

PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by NickSCFC » Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:52 pm

Disney offers to buy Sky

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... n-takeover

Disney has offered to buy Sky News to help Rupert Murdoch push through his £11.7bn takeover of Sky by allaying fears he will control too much of the UK news media.

Murdoch’s bid is being scrutinised by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) amid concerns that buying the 61% of Sky his company 21st Century Fox does not already own will give him too much media influence. The Murdoch family also controls News UK, the owner of the Times and the Sun, and the radio station TalkSport.

Disney has “expressed interest” in buying Sky News, a move that would clear media plurality concerns and pave the way for its own $66bn (£47bn) takeover of most of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, including all of Sky.

“The Walt Disney Company has expressed an interest in acquiring Sky News, with a view to adding it to Disney’s existing portfolio of television channels, whether or not Disney’s proposed acquisition of 21st Century Fox proceeds,” said Fox in a statement.

Disney, which has called Sky a “crown jewel” Fox asset, said it would “agree to sustain the operating capital of Sky News and maintain its editorial independence”.

The entertainment company said buying Sky News was not conditional on a successful takeover of Fox.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Green Gecko » Tue Apr 03, 2018 8:22 pm

Well Disney are harmless, they just make cartoons about talking animals and gnomes. The fact it was founded by a racist, misogynist fascist bigot needn't concern anyone.

After all, corporations are just people, they even have the same rights in the US.

Seriously though, total media ownership by anyone is a bad thing.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Lagamorph » Tue Apr 03, 2018 8:23 pm

Still, better Disney than Comcast.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by TigaSefi » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:00 pm

18billion is a lot of money for a shrinking medium of you know paying a sub to watch tv through conventional means. I mean I only turn on the TV to play games. I am curious to how they make a profit through a high churn rate and low take up on new subs.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by KK » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:13 pm

I think Sky has that covered in the short to medium term by also offering the entire SkyQ service through broadband (which I suppose could theoretically open up the possibility of SkyQ boxes being sold in-store as well for self installation) and then beyond that with NowTV, which is FINALLY upgrading to 1080p in a few months.

I think there's been some resistance to upgrading NowTV too quickly so as not to cannibalise the main Sky service. What you have is this sort of halfway house at the moment (being able to pause and rewind TV but not record onto a NowTV box or into the Cloud, something you can now do in the USA).

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Floex » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:58 pm

TigaSefi wrote:18billion is a lot of money for a shrinking medium of you know paying a sub to watch tv through conventional means. I mean I only turn on the TV to play games. I am curious to how they make a profit through a high churn rate and low take up on new subs.


This is such a misconception. Television is so strong right now, we might change or add to how we view ondemand but television isn’t going anywhere.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Photek » Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:32 pm

Green Gecko wrote:Well Disney are harmless, they just make cartoons about talking animals and gnomes. The fact it was founded by a racist, misogynist fascist bigot needn't concern anyone.

After all, corporations are just people, they even have the same rights in the US.

Seriously though, total media ownership by anyone is a bad thing.

I hope you don’t drive a Ford.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Green Gecko » Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:05 pm

I don't drive at all :lol:

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Saint of Killers » Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:40 am

So things keep getting interesting, eh...

21st Century Fox's London office raided in market abuse inquiry

Other sports broadcasters in EU countries were also raided by European commission officials

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/ ... an-offices

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Lagamorph » Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:53 am

Comcast have put in a formal bid :dread:

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by KK » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:01 pm

Come back Rupert Murdoch, all is forgiven.

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NickSCFC

PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by NickSCFC » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:13 pm

KK wrote:Come back Rupert Murdoch, all is forgiven.


I haven't read up on this in too much detail, how is his bad?

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Lagamorph » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:17 pm

NickSCFC wrote:
KK wrote:Come back Rupert Murdoch, all is forgiven.


I haven't read up on this in too much detail, how is his bad?

Comcast have probably one of the worst reputations in America when it comes to how they treat their customers in the TV/internet markets. Can't imagine they treat their staff much better.

Comcast fully take advantage of the fact that for most of their customers they're the only option other than "No internet"

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Alvin Flummux » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:21 pm

NickSCFC wrote:
KK wrote:Come back Rupert Murdoch, all is forgiven.


I haven't read up on this in too much detail, how is his bad?


1) Their pricing system is absurd (and often expensive).

If you’ve ever wondered why a generation of young people are becoming “cord-cutters,” those who cancel their cable subscriptions in favor of streaming TV, there’s a reason why. Between 2009 and 2013, basic cable rates rose by 68 percent, according to the New York Post, the highest price increase over that period. Although the Post reports that Time Warner Cable prices fell during that period, the proposed merger between the two companies is likely to change that trend.

Those prices vary by city, with New York and San Francisco having some of the highest prices in the world, but in San Francisco, that nearly $100 bundle bill doesn’t necessarily get you better quality. America’s tech capital gets handily beaten by Paris in terms of connection speed and is matched by Washington, D.C., and Toronto, where users pay around 33 percent less for service.

As an article from Forbes’ Adam Tanner outlines, there are a number of different reasons for Comcast’s varying prices, which don’t just have to do with your geography but a number of data, including the “history of how Comcast acquired the local cable provider,” “Internet speed,” and “new customer offers.” These factors led to Tanner being offered four different estimates from the company for the exact same service.

Confused? Welcome to Comcast.

2) Comcast is throttling your Internet.

In a world of high speed, all downloads should be created equal, but they’re not. Comcast has been accused of throttling certain websites, and during certain hours, a frustration for customers but also a considerable free speech and freedom of information issue. Netflix, for example, has accused the firm of throttling in order to control the high traffic created by livestreaming.

In the case of Netflix, the firm ultimately ended up paying what was effectively a bribe to Comcast to secure access for their customers. What happens for other sites that lack the ability to pay for access? That’s the multi-billion dollar question in the net neutrality debate.

3) It’s also slowing America down.

According to a 2013 survey of the world’s fastest Internet speeds from Forbes, the country with the most efficient Web connection is South Korea. Their Internet runs a whopping 14.2 Mbps, nearly twice as fast as American servers; the U.S places all the way down in 8th, behind the Czech Republic and Latvia (and America doesn’t fare much better in Akamai’s report). Although China lags behind the rest of the continent, Hong Kong and Japan join South Korea as the top Internets in the world.

Forbes believes that the reasons countries like South Korea and Hong Kong are winning the Internet are the countries’ infrastructure and technology, as South Korea widely relies on Samsung instead of Apple. However, it’s also the folks running the infrastructure, as Comcast’s service is known for outages, as well as unpredictable speeds and overall unreliability.

Comcast’s bandwidth issues are so well-known to customers that it’s easy to tell if a friend of yours has Comcast. Is their Internet down? Then it’s a safe bet.

4) Comcast has one of the most aggressively irritating customer retention strategies in the business.

Calling to cancel your service should be a snap, no matter why you’re doing it. While a quick question from a representative about why you’re choosing to close your account to determine if there’s something the company can do (lower rates, send a tech out to address low download speeds) is reasonable, the process shouldn’t be grueling. Not so at Comcast, where it might seem easier to get a ticket out of hell than to close an account, although the company has vowed to change its policies since a call highlighting their call center practices went viral this year.

Insiders say, however, that representatives are under considerable pressure to make the “save” (i.e. keep customers in the Comcast family). That can include enduring verbal abuse and more from furious customers who just want to close out their accounts and move on.

5) It has Infamously terrible customer service.

It’s not just the retention department that will drive you up the wall. Comcast has truly terrible customer service, which is on-par for any telecommunications company, but they’re particularly bad, to the point that some critics have accused them of fraud.

Between the infamous endless “service windows” (be home between 10 and never), having to pay for things Comcast broke, repeated dropped connections, charging for service during hurricane-induced outages, useless call centers, and more, it’s no surprise that Comcast was voted Worst Company in America 2014. That prize, by the way, is one you do not want to win; unlike the Golden Raspberries, it’s not an homage to schlock but an expression of collective outrage.

6) It’s too big to fail.

But more than that, the Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen suggests that it might be too big to even function. Comcast is a huge corporation, accounting for 83,000 employees in 80 markets, ones that, apparently, can’t even agree on what price to charge for their services. “None of this, to say the least, provides much reason to feel optimistic for consumers should Comcast’s Time Warner acquisition succeed,” Rosen explains. “Problems that stem from size tend not to improve with growth.”

In an article for the Verge, Adrianne Jeffries explains that this very growth was part of the company’s strategy. Jeffries calls the company less a “federation of fiefdoms.” Jeffries explains, “Like other major players in the cable industry, Comcast grew by rolling up smaller (and sometimes larger) systems: E.W. Scripps in 1995, AT&T Broadband in 2001, and Adelphia Communications in 2005, among others.”

Acquiring so many companies so quickly led to a culture of chaos in the company, as Comcast chose to keep all the original infrastructure of the organizations they engulfed, leading to short-term continuity but long-term bedlam. According to one representative, employees frequently change which of the company’s hubs they report to. “The Houston area at one point reported to Boston,” he explained. “Then they were reporting to Atlanta. When I left, they were reporting to Denver.”

7) Even employees hate Comcast.

Employees can be the greatest gauge of company quality, which is why airlines are so fond of putting those little badges by the door boasting about the overall happiness of their flight crews. Happy employees make for happy customers, because they’ll provide better service, be more engaged with their work, and be more committed to staying longer. As anyone who’s ever had a cup of ginger ale spilled on them midflight by a disgruntled flight attendant (“oops!”) knows, employees who aren’t pleased with their environment are sure to pass that on to customers.

Comcast employees consistently rank their workplace as an absolutely terrible one, and, hilariously, their #1 reason? Customer service. If that sounds like Kafka, it’s not. It’s just a normal day at Comcast.


https://www.dailydot.com/via/why-comcas ... y-america/

Last edited by Alvin Flummux on Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
NickSCFC

PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by NickSCFC » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:22 pm

Lagamorph wrote:
NickSCFC wrote:
KK wrote:Come back Rupert Murdoch, all is forgiven.


I haven't read up on this in too much detail, how is his bad?

Comcast have probably one of the worst reputations in America when it comes to how they treat their customers in the TV/internet markets. Can't imagine they treat their staff much better.

Comcast fully take advantage of the fact that for most of their customers they're the only option other than "No internet"


Their cable TV platform, Xfinity, is apparently abysmal too.

So who would be the best option, Disney?

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Saint of Killers » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:25 pm

No! Don't want Comcast getting a foothold over here!

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Alvin Flummux » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:27 pm

Comcast is like a corporate cancer. You absolutely do not want it.

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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Lagamorph » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:30 pm

NickSCFC wrote:
Lagamorph wrote:
NickSCFC wrote:
KK wrote:Come back Rupert Murdoch, all is forgiven.


I haven't read up on this in too much detail, how is his bad?

Comcast have probably one of the worst reputations in America when it comes to how they treat their customers in the TV/internet markets. Can't imagine they treat their staff much better.

Comcast fully take advantage of the fact that for most of their customers they're the only option other than "No internet"


Their cable TV platform, Xfinity, is apparently abysmal too.

So who would be the best option, Disney?

Disney would absolutely be the best option.

Fortunately Fox have released a statement saying they're still committed to the purchase, so hopefully that means they're going to up their bid.

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Alvin Flummux
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PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by Alvin Flummux » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:39 pm

More reasons not to want Comcast:

When Consumerist reader Robert canceled his business tier service with Comcast, he was charged a $1,775 early termination fee, which was taken directly from his bank account. The problem? The fee should’ve never been assessed, something Comcast eventually admitted.

The bigger problem? Comcast took more than two years to send Robert a check to reimburse him. As of July 2016, the company had made three separate promises to pay up — but Robert never saw the cash in the mail. At one point, a Comcast representative told Robert he should dispute the missing money with his bank. Consumerist took up Robert’s cause, and the company promised to send a check within 7 to 10 business days. After two years of waiting, it finally happened.

...

Conal O’Rourke claims his bill was never correct during the year in which he was a customer. When he tried to fix the problem, Comcast shipped him nearly $2,000 worth of equipment that he never requested or needed — and then billed him for it.

After filing a complaint with Comcast’s chief accounting officer, O’Rourke was fired from his job. He then sued Comcast, alleging that they contacted his employer, PwC, who holds Comcast as a major client, and told his supervisor that O’Rourke attempted to use his position at PwC as a negotiating tactic to get a better cable deal.


...

In March 2015, Consumerist reported on a Comcast customer, Seth, who ultimately had to sell a house he just bought because he couldn’t get internet access, which he needed for his job. Like most Comcast horror stories, Seth’s saga spans months of useless calls, appointments, and general mayhem.

This story also points to the larger problem of cable providers falsely claiming service is available in certain locations. BroadbandMap.gov showed several internet options available at his address, but just to make sure, Seth asked Comcast before purchasing his house if the address was serviceable. He was misled. In the end, after Comcast vaguely quoted him a $50,000 to $60,000 charge to bring service to his location, and having no luck with alternate providers, Seth saw no other option but to sell his new home.

...

When Lisa Brown called to cancel the cable TV portion of her service, she was, of course, transferred to a retention specialist specifically trained to talk her out of it. She didn’t back down, though. Much to her surprise and agitation, the next service bill she received was addressed not to her husband, Ricardo Brown, but to “Asshole Brown.”

“I was never rude,” Brown told consumer advocate Chris Elliott. “It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer.” Just days after Brown’s story went viral, three more Comcast customers came forward reporting their names had been changed to derogatory words.

...

In a November 2016 recount for Salon, Erik Lundegaard describes how “a corporation insinuated itself into one of the worst weeks our family has been through.” In September 2016, Lundegaard’s 86-year-old mother suffered a debilitating stroke, leaving her unable to speak. Erik and his sister, Karen, sorted through their mother’s affairs afterward to find ways to save money for the mounting medical bills. First on the chopping block: the $126 Comcast bill for cable TV.

But when Lundegaard called Comcast, he was told he’d need to be the power of attorney for his mother in order to cancel the service. “Look,” he said, “I’m not trying to take money out of my mother’s bank account or anything. I’m just trying to cancel a service,” according to Salon.

To make a long story short, it took multiple phone calls, and an in-person visit to a Comcast office, to finally have the simple service canceled — for a woman who could no longer speak to cancel it herself.


All that and more at the link: Link-me-do.

NickSCFC

PostRe: Fox on course to finally purchase Sky
by NickSCFC » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:42 pm

Saint of Killers wrote:No! Don't want Comcast getting a foothold over here!


Seems like this is another step towards the utter dominance of the media in this country by America.

Amazon, Apple and Netflix are all enjoying growth here while the likes of Sky, Virgin, BBC and ITV are suffering.

I'll admit I'm part of the problem, we "cut the cord" a couple of years back and now only pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime and dip in and out of NowTV.

American TV just keeps growing and growing in quality with the likes of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Wire and Westworld. British companies just can't compete, the last shows I watched by BBC were Blue Planet and Sherlock, ITV only EVER gets turned on for The Chase.


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