The End of Days is not upon us.
I don't know about you, but there was actually some weird, masochistic part of me that was quietly excited to see what kind of horrors would rain down upon us when Comcast and Time Warner merged together to become one massive capitalist black hole that just sucked in money and happiness while radiating absolutely zero f**ks.
I feel like it would have been perversely entertaining to see how bad things could get. Would wifi speed trickle down to old school dial-up levels? Would people literally be dousing themselves in gasoline and setting themselves on fire during customer service calls? Would shadow demons come pouring out of our cable feeds at 4am on Sunday mornings to harangue us about upgrading our plans to include fax service for some reason? I was dying to know!
Alas, I shall now never find out, for Comcast Corp. is just about ready to pull the plug on its $45 billion deal to ingest Time Warner Cable Inc. deal after a disastrous hearing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. According to Bloomberg:
FCC officials told the two biggest U.S. cable companies on Wednesday that they are leaning toward concluding the merger doesn't help consumers, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
An FCC hearing can take months to complete and effectively kill a deal by dragging out the approval process beyond the companies' time frame for completion. Justice Department staff is also leaning against the deal...
I suppose I should be happy that I can simply carry on with my annoying, unsatisfied customer service as is. Obviously, things will be better this way.
You know, though, I just really wanted to see what a shadow demon looked like. Just once.