Report: Comcast In Talks To Buy DreamWorks For $3 Billion (usatoday.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Comcast is in talks to buy DreamWorks Animation in a multi-billion-dollar deal, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are reporting. The cost of the deal would be more than $3 billion, according to both news organizations, citing unnamed sources. Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, has been searching for a buyer for the company, which has a current market value of $2.3 billion. DreamWorks is based in Glendale, Calif., and was founded in 1994 by Katzenberg, filmmaker Steven Spielberg and movie and music executive David Geffen. The animation unit was spun off in 2004. Philadelphia-based Comcast has two primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal. Comcast also owns Universal Parks and Resorts. Comcast already owns an animation studio, Illumination Entertainment, known for its work on the Despicable Me and Minions movies.
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If systemd really is as bad as some people say, why not fork a major distro and solve the problem?
They already have!!! It's called "Devuan" (a fork of Debian). And that's just one of many.
But apparently that's not good enough for them. The 17 people who use Devuan are still pissed that it isn't the most popular distro I guess.
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They don't need to fork a distro or create their own. There's already a bunch of distros already made by people like this, such as Devuan. All they have to do is go use one of those.
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and make you pay $10/mo per system with the shit iguide ui?
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new cable overlords.
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's our new "entertainment" overlords. Are people really okay with a single company not only controlling a huge amount of media content creation, but the (occasionally exclusive) delivery mechanism for that media as well? That seems tailor made for a built-in conflict of interest right there. These media conglomerates are getting ridiculous. I mean, thank goodness we actually have an alternative to cable TV in streaming media these days, but even so, a lot of people still rely on cable modems for their internet as well.
What's perhaps most irritating to me is the notion that a company ends up getting so big that you can barely avoid doing any business with it. It will be a cold day in hell before I subscribe to Comcast cable again in my lifetime, but must I now avoid all Dreamworks films as well (or at least *paying* for them), assuming this deal happens?
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I agree. I had the same thought the other day thinking about Netflix and how I like their original programming. What if they became the only game in town? Would they continue to be good after they had a controlling market share?
Our only healthy choice is to make sure there are many players and many choices.
(except if we have an 'overlord', then of course I was always with them.... :P)
Re: I for one... (Score:2)
Without banning exclusives you get a fragmented library and have to subscribe to multiple services and end up paying more. The rich Wall Street fat cat invests in both as well and makes twice the money but wait there's more! He buys tax breaks from congress for those multiple companies so you have to pay higher taxes to make up for it. Costing you more.
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Let's not start legislating / regulating the crap out of a new industry before we see real problems emerge. I'm not even sure how you could justify "banning exclusives" when these services are producing their own original content, and such legislation would probably be on shaky legal ground even were that not the case.
More to the point, while multiple players means you may have to pay for multiple services, these services are all directly competing with each other, which puts natural market pressure on kee
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Had the FTC included 1 founding rule in their charter, the 10% rule, these types of situations could be avoided. The 10% rule is simple: if your company via a merger or acquisition will exceed 10% of any market, you may not merge/acquire.
It admittedly destroys the bigger plays on Wall Street, but I'm pretty sure no one cares except those 0.001%. It certainly plays to bigger competition and will require proper regulation of imports to prevent unfair trade practices.
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They just got approved to by TWC, they now own the majority of the united states home internet and cable connections.
Its not 'occasionally' anymore.
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There is nothing wrong with your display. Do not adjust your dial, tap your touchscreen, or click your mouse... we control both the refresh rate and resolution. If we wish to make it louder during the required unstoppable commercial, we will bring up the volume. We are controlling your bandwidth and requiring you to pay to play. For the rest of your life, sit quietly, without rational thought and we will control all that you see and hear. And now, one, and all, give a round of silent applause to your new me
Re:Put Comcast out of business (Score:4)
You don't shut Comcast down, you spin off NBCU and the problem is solved.
Wait a second.... (Score:2)
Anybody want to look up why Comcast and NBCUniversal merged?
dear Comcast.... (Score:4)
how about fucking spending money on your infrastructure first?
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Well, they're going to spend around $17 billion on infrastructure ($11B capex, $6B infrastructure-related opex) this year, so it's not like they're standing still...
Next acquisition (Score:2)
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Privately owned water went well in London, so well...
You know if my internet is shit I can live with it but if I have no (or poisoned) water, then that's a different matter. And I'm saying this on slashdot.
Re:dear Comcast.... (Score:4, Insightful)
They are spending money on infrastructure. The more deals and schemes they put in place to keep the competition out the more valuable their network gets.
Or did you mean spend money on improving it? For that, your best move is to get Google Fibre to come to your town.
Where the Money is going (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting that Comcast imposes data caps and charges a pile of money for internet access, complaining that they need to do this to help manage their network infrastructure instead of investing back into infrastructure to accommodate their paying customers. Instead, they take money gained from their customers and use it to buy other companies. This is why it's so frustrating to see the FCC not push harder on these companies to prevent/remove data caps and increase bandwidth for customers, especially since the companies are doing all they can to punish customers for cord cutting. As a cable company, should they not focus on providing the best service available for their customers?
I would be all in favor of Comcast's efforts to become a content creator if they were't using their position against their customers who don't want their content via a cable subscription.
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In other areas in the world, like in europe, the FCC equivalent required the cable companies to allow competitors to access their cable infrastructure. The fees were made such that that the competitor can still make a business. Then the market decides on whether there are caps or not, and how big they are, instead of the monopolist.
It's enabling a market in a place where a monopoly is the only viable option (running two cables to your home is just a dumb and wasteful idea). But seems it doesn't go well with
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Agreed. In fact, back in the days of DSL ruling broadband internet services, we had exactly those same regulations here in the USA. My mother is still using the same independent DSL provider she has for ages, which leases/shares equipment and lines with the local telco.
The problem is that when the cable companies laid their wires later on, most municipalities granted them exclusive access to those lines in exchange for paying the full expenses. That, plus differences in the way Cable COAX vs Telephone wi
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(running two cables to your home is just a dumb and wasteful idea).
I have two cables running to my home, and if you count electricity it's three. While it may seem "dumb", it's called "redundancy". You see, when my cable goes out I can still call the cable company to report the problem, and when my landline phone goes out I can still call the phone company to report it.
The funniest/saddest conversation I've had with Comcast is when the "customer service" person tried upselling me to Xfinity Voice while I was calling to report a complete cable outage. (I've had many stupid
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This is 2016, the only thing they are focused on providing is shareholder value.
Comcast, We don't give a F (Score:1)
Just a reminder from your friendly Comcast, We don't give an F [youtube.com]
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The FCC tried this after the 1996 Telecom Deregulation bill with DSL line service. The problem is that the incumbent carriers still owned the local exchanges. For a 3rd party to hook up your DSL, their technician had to meet a telco technician; it was your job as the customer to schedule this meeting. Scheduling a telco technician involves a pretty wide open 4 hour window and they could be late within that; the 3rd party tech could usually come for an hour. So, if you got lucky, they'd meet up; half the tim
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For a 3rd party to hook up your DSL, their technician had to meet a telco technician; it was your job as the customer to schedule this meeting.
You're saying that none of the third-party DSL vendors was smart enough to take on this job as part of their desire to sell service to people? They really told customers that they had to do this? They didn't want to sell DSL very bad then, did they?
I know a third party DSL vendor in town, and I've never heard them say that I'd have to call the telco to try to schedule someone to meet them at the CO to install DSL, but then, I've only tried to get DSL once. CenturyLink botched the job so bad I just dropped
Phone call... (Score:5, Insightful)
Could someone please explain to me (Score:2)
At sufficient scale, this combination obviously creates perverse incentives.
How would this not just worsen the market failure we're already seeing?
Monopoly (Score:2)
First NBC for $12.3B, and now Dreamworks for $3B? How does a government-sanctioned monopoly have this much free capital in the first place?
Oh right. They're a government-sanctioned monopoly.