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Speaker 1: Tim mcalgan is with BNA Bloomberg BNA. They write wonderfully

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Speaker 1: acute reports on things. His thing is Mike McKie. I

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Speaker 1: don't know about your house, but cable TV observation and

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Speaker 1: the keen household has changed. Tim Mcalgan here on the

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Speaker 1: future cable and Broadman. Tim the immovable force is I

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Speaker 1: observe people watching less TV? Is that actually happening? Um? Well,

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Speaker 1: it depends on how you define TV, right, So if

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Speaker 1: your teenager is upstairs streaming HBO onto their laptop, is

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Speaker 1: that watching TV? I would argue that yes it is.

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Speaker 1: Um So how people are watching TV is changing greatly.

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Speaker 1: Um But I think in fact, if you do the

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Speaker 1: measurements the number of hours watching what we would typically

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Speaker 1: or historically consider a TV content, it's probably up considerably.

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Speaker 1: What is the future of cable now that we've seen

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Speaker 1: the Time Warner deal um completed? Do we see any

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Speaker 1: other deals? Or the company is just getting too large

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Speaker 1: now that the Justice Department wouldn't let us go there? Well, um,

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Speaker 1: you know I said they'd never let a T and

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Speaker 1: T re reform, so I've been wrong before. But um,

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Speaker 1: I think really what we've seen is is a pretty

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Speaker 1: strong stand that we want probably no more or excuse me,

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Speaker 1: no fewer uh than four large operators in any given

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Speaker 1: segment of the telecom industry UM. And even if that

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Speaker 1: wasn't the case, in the cable industry, there's only a

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Speaker 1: couple of big targets that would be worthwhile UM. That

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Speaker 1: would be Cox and Media com uh. Cox the family

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Speaker 1: has made it clear repeatedly they have no interest in

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Speaker 1: selling UM. Media Comm's got its own issues, and Rocco Comiso,

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Speaker 1: the CEO, founder, CEO and chairman of Media com UM,

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Speaker 1: is going to be very very careful about any deal

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Speaker 1: he either participates in. It is either a buyer or

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Speaker 1: a seller. So I think that the the you know,

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Speaker 1: the the big merger phases over for now. And these

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Speaker 1: guys have a lot of diggesting digesting to do as

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Speaker 1: they as they pull pull these disparate systems together and

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Speaker 1: make sure that they don't aggravate their customers. Within the

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Speaker 1: acute detail that you write on at Bloomberg b n A,

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Speaker 1: what does it mean to Comcast as an example, if

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Speaker 1: what they do is nothing more than a conduit to

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Speaker 1: other digital products, are the agnostic well they they You

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Speaker 1: can argue that they ought to be, and there's certainly

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Speaker 1: have been a lot of arguments over the years whether

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Speaker 1: that conduit should be pretty much a utility providing just open,

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Speaker 1: fast access to any content you want. But when you've

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Speaker 1: had a company like Comcast that also owns NBC Universal

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Speaker 1: and they're picking up a lot of other content UM

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Speaker 1: properties along the way, UM, Charter hasn't really begun that yet, UM,

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Speaker 1: but we expect that they'll probably be looking that way

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Speaker 1: to a T and T is reportedly today in Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: News reported to be actively interested in picking up Yahoo

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Speaker 1: and Rising has made a number of high profile content

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Speaker 1: buys UM over the last few months. So UM, I

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Speaker 1: think that really what you're seeing is companies that never

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Speaker 1: really believe that content and conduit should be separated are

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Speaker 1: now moving to more vertical M and A activity rather

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Speaker 1: than looking horizontally to to just beef up their numbers. Well,

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Speaker 1: getting back to my original question, is the government want

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Speaker 1: that kind of vertical integration. Well, we're gonna see, aren't we. UM.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty clear that the FCC is looking carefully at

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Speaker 1: this issue. Tom Wheeler announced a few months ago that

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Speaker 1: he was going to basically do an investigation of what's

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Speaker 1: called zero rating, effectively assigning some UH content. UM. Well,

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Speaker 1: let me back up a little bit, UM saying that

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Speaker 1: some content will not count against a data cap that

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Speaker 1: is the limit of how much data you can use

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Speaker 1: in a month without being penalized. UM. The question is

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Speaker 1: whether by excluding some data from those caps, are you

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Speaker 1: in fact advantaging either your own content or perhaps a

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Speaker 1: partner's content. So that's an active investigation going on at

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Speaker 1: the FCCU. A bunch of organizations wrote a letter to

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Speaker 1: the f c C I think two days ago UM

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Speaker 1: encouraging them to make a to bring that into a

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Speaker 1: formal proceeding UH so that there could be um as

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Speaker 1: much public attention paid in public comment made. So that's

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Speaker 1: one indication of how seriously they're taking it. And then

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Speaker 1: there's also the set top box issue, which really is

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Speaker 1: talking about how do we free up content from conduit

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Speaker 1: UH and make it possible for other players to come

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Speaker 1: in and create the interface, whether that's a physical box

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Speaker 1: or some sort of cloud based interface that allows you

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Speaker 1: to not only receive over the top the way a

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Speaker 1: Roku or Apple TV or any of the other devices do,

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Speaker 1: but also integrate with that the cable lineup This has

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Speaker 1: been great. Thank you so much. Simicael could love to

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Speaker 1: get you in the studio here with Bloomberg BNA, and

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Speaker 1: they're just acutely sharp reports