--- title: Trust Busting Isn't Back. Comcast Was Just Unlucky. description: Comcast may drop its merger with Time Warner Cable. Anti-monopoly groups chock that up as a major victory, but it's not quite that simple. canonical: https://time.com/3833466/comcast-time-warner-cable/ author: Haley Sweetland Edwards article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-23T21:39:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T10:54:07.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trust Busting Isn't Back. Comcast Was Just Unlucky. og:description: The merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable had bad timing, among other things. og:url: https://time.com/3833466/comcast-time-warner-cable/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbec2dbe354dba5cd/6987ec895f570f59d1b1944a/gettyimages-170337838.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: The Comcast Corp. logo is seen as Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Corp. (R) speaks during a news conference in Washington on June 11, 2013. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trust Busting Isn't Back. Comcast Was Just Unlucky. twitter:description: The merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable had bad timing, among other things. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbec2dbe354dba5cd/6987ec895f570f59d1b1944a/gettyimages-170337838.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trust-Busting Isn't Back. Comcast Was Just Unlucky. > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Brief (Washington politics, twice weekly), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=ff5a64fc-4d50-48b5-a33f-dacf16f8ce3f&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1)  by [Haley Sweetland Edwards](https://time.com/author/haley-sweetland-edwards/)  ## Haley Sweetland Edwards Updated: Dec 13, 2023 10:54 AM UTCPublished: Apr 23, 2015 9:39 PM UTC  The Comcast Corp. logo is seen as Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Corp. (R) speaks during a news conference in Washington on June 11, 2013. The Comcast Corp. logo is seen as Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Corp. (R) speaks during a news conference in Washington on June 11, 2013. Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Haley Sweetland Edwards](https://time.com/author/haley-sweetland-edwards/)  ## Haley Sweetland Edwards Updated: Dec 13, 2023 10:54 AM UTCPublished: Apr 23, 2015 9:39 PM UTC Comcast walked away from its $45.2 billion proposed merger with Time Warner Cable, according to a statement released Friday. The unexpected change of heart—attributed to unnamed sources by Bloomberg News, CNBC and the New York _Times_ (Comcast declined to comment to TIME)—comes just a day after government officials at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department [expressed doubt this week](http://time.com/3832881/comcast-time-warner-merger/) that a marriage between the nation’s two largest cable companies would serve the public interest. But advocates for robust antitrust action shouldn’t celebrate too much. The collapse of the merger had more to do with the specifics of this particular deal than a return to the 1970s, when the federal government last engaged in energetic trust busting. For starters, the two companies involved in this particular marriage are uniquely unpopular. In [poll](http://www.theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/press-2014/press-release-telecommunications-and-information-2014) after [poll](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2015%5Frq%5Fmedia%5Frelease%5Freport%5F020415.pdf), Americans ranked both Comcast and Time Warner Cable as among the most-hated companies in the country. The prospect of two nationally despised companies merging into one bigger despised company did not earn much public support. Though 97 members of Congress [signed a letter](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/11-01-05comcasthouseletter.pdf) in 2011 in support of the unprecedented merger between Comcast and the much less-hated NBC Universal, this time around, [there was hardly a peep](http://articles.philly.com/2015-03-17/news/60179472%5F1%5Fcomcast-time-warner-comcast-spokeswoman-sena-fitzmaurice-nbc-universal). Weak public support for the deal was also exacerbated by bad timing. The announcement of the proposed merger in February 2014 just happened to coincide with what became, over the course of the last year, a frothy, nationwide debate over net neutrality, the idea that all web traffic should be treated equally. While Comcast [did its very best](http://corporate.comcast.com/twctransaction/net-neutrality-together) to [separate its proposed merger from the hubbub over a free and open Internet,](http://www.foxbusiness.com/2014/11/13/why-comcast-vs-netflix-is-not-about-net-neutrality/) it was a tough sell. Comcast, which charged Netflix for faster delivery of its content—a violation of many people’s idea of net neutrality—found itself [constantly in the news](http://time.com/71688/the-great-comcast-vs-netflix-battle-begins-anew/). But even if the environment had been pristine for a merger of two giant companies, the fact that Comcast and Time Warner Cable are regulated by the FCC meant that, unlike with most mergers, this one always had to clear two separate hoops: one with the FCC and one with the Department of Justice. The FCC was charged with determining whether the transaction would [serve “the public interest, convenience, and necessity”](http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-transaction-review-competition-and-public-interest)—a nebulous standard that only exacerbated the companies’ problems. Meanwhile, the Justice Department had to decide whether the larger, combined Comcast would constitute a monopoly—another vaguely worded mandate that [left room for interpretation](http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/hearings/single%5Ffirm/docs/222144.htm). The FCC, while technically an independent agency, doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Just weeks after President Obama expressed support for the strongest-possible net neutrality rules last November, the FCC proposed them. So it’s perhaps not insignificant to mention that Obama, a second-term Democrat who’s currently [going to battle with liberals](http://time.com/3824912/hillary-clinton-free-trade-tpp/) by supporting the biggest free-trade deal of all time, would throw the left a bone by quietly encouraging both agencies to slow-roll a merger that [most Americans hated anyway](http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/comcast-time-warner-cable-merger-poll-shows-majority-oppose-1201224277/). If Comcast walks away from the Time Warner Cable merger as reported, anti-trust groups who [vehemently](http://presente.org/) [opposed](http://www.dontcomcasttheinternet.com/) the deal will celebrate. But there’s no reason to believe that the $49 billion merger between AT&T and DirecTV—or any of the other huge marriages coming down the pike—won’t go through without a hitch. Anti-trust organizations may have won a battle, but they’re still losing the war. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3833466/comcast-time-warner-cable/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3833466/comcast-time-warner-cable/"},"headline":"Trust-Busting Isn't Back. Comcast Was Just Unlucky.","datePublished":"2015-04-23T21:39:41.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T10:54:07.000Z","description":"Comcast may drop its merger with Time Warner Cable. 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