Could These 25 Conditions Derail Comcast's Acquisition of Time Warner Cable?

On February 13, 2014, Comcast announced it had entered into an agreement to buy Time Warner Cable for approximately $45 billion. A transaction of that size requires, by law, approval by federal regulators. In the Comcast-Time Warner Case, both the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission and reviewing the acquisition in a process outlined by Andrew Jay Schwartzman in the Digital Beat in 2014. With the lobbying power of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, helping to drive the review, one might suspect relatively easy approval for the deal. But as the one-year anniversary of Comcast’s announcement passed, we saw instead headlines like “A year later, is the huge Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal doomed?”, “One year later, Comcast’s megamerger faces unknown fate, dubious public”, “Skies darken over Comcast merger”, and “Comcast's customer service incidents jeopardizing $45 billion deal”. Clearly, it is time to check in on the merger review. But California regulators -- not the Department of Justice or the FCC -- are the first to show their hand on the prospects of the deal gaining approval.