Illustration by Kheng Guan Toh, via ShutterstockOPINION: The California Public Utilities Commission is about to make a landmark decision about the merger of Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks that will have a generational effect on closing—or possibly making permanent—the Digital Divide.
A sports complex with the Time Warner Cable logo. (Photo: Katherine Welles, Shutterstock)Change may be coming to millions of California cable TV and broadband users. A looming $78.7 billion merger between Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications would have a major impact on California’s cable TV and broadband markets, with the new entity, called New Charter, serving nearly four of every 10 customers in the state.
As a deadline loomed, Gov. Brown struck down legislation to grant state Attorney General Kamala Harris more authority over nonprofit hospital mergers. The attorney general — a position he once held — already has sufficient authority, he said Monday in his veto message.
OPINION: At a time when Californians need more access to hospital services, SB 1094 should be equipped with flashing lights and sirens. The bill politicizes transactions involving the sale or transfer of non-profit hospitals, and deserves to be vetoed by the Governor.
LInda Vista Community Hospital in Los Angeles, formerly Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital. (Photo: Downtowngal, Wikimedia)State Attorney General Kamala Harris wants unprecedented authority over contracts dealing with nonprofit hospitals, after a deal in Southern California caused abortion-rights activists to cry foul. On the governor’s desk is a bill that would give the attorney general’s office more time, from 60 to 90 days, to review such deals.
Comcast company trucks await assignments. (Photo: Associated Press, Gene Puskar)A national merger between communications giants Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable could lead to an unprecedented consolidation of California cable and broadband markets. The pending $45 billion merger would grant Comcast — already the state’s No. 1 cable provider — a greater share of the California market, stretching from northern California and San Francisco Bay area and Sacramento region, down the Central Valley through the Los Angeles basin, east to the Nevada and Arizona lines and southeast to the Mexico border.