Content is king and now the telcos are likely fighting content rates renegotiations by acquiring content companies like TW. US cable subscription business was n

Content is king and now the telcos are likely fighting content rates renegotiations by acquiring content companies like TW. US cable subscription business was nearly 92 million households a few years ago. Now that Netflix has crossed more than half of that and they are competing with original content, the telcos have something to worry about. Comcast can do the same with NBCUniversal, the other telcos are left with low negotiation power come channel distribution deal time. The big BIG aspect of this deal is the number of top consumer-demanded channels run by Turner. ESPN (non-Turner) is the most expensive, but then TBS, TNT, and CNN, and Cartoon Network are near the top on the price list for cable distributors. In some plans they define upper-level subscription tiers. This acquisition seems good for competition - Comcast and AT&T would be less inclined to limit access to cable channels to their subscribers only if the other party has something they want.