adamblast

http://www.msnbc.com/news/819731.asp

I was all for it personally, but then again, I'm not upset the merger has been denied. It could have been great news technology-wise, or it could have been terrible news monopoly-wise...

Bad news for me. I live in a small market DMA, and only the "combined monster" would ever have had the satellite room for small market networks. Sigh.

Blaster1

What will happen now?

NC-36

If you have Directv, you can always "move" for some networks

huzefa

I think the merger was a good idea. The company would save on bandwidth, be able to get higher PQ on all channels, add more HD channels and get a lot more local channels to people. This really sucks. (Though I'm betting Charlie Ergen is crying even more than me for losing $500 million to GM now).

adamblast

NC-36 -- I might well end up doing that very thing sometime in the next year or two, assuming it's still possible. DirecTivo's pretty irresistable, and it's tough missing all the HBO & Showtime original shows these days. Of course, it means no more free cable for the two guys that rent rooms from me...

Brian Shannon

I am glad.

The competition is good.

typecase

Yay! No merger! While the day of the world being run by three megaconglomorates is creeping upon us, we must still defend against this dark future.

maskedman

Many people on some of the satellite forums are saying that Rupert Murdoch will probably take another run at Directv, after all the dust clears on the dish/dtv situation.

B5Erik

I don't know how the merger would have worked anyway. They have satellites in different orbital positions, the technology is different, so they wouldn't have been able to switch to the same system without major difficulties.

It's more likely that they would have had to continue with 2 separate systems, but maybe the programming would have been the same, and then the 2 systems would have been run by the same company with the same pricing plans, etc.

BAD idea. That would be like only having ONE cable company all across the U.S. - wouldn't that be nice?

Thrush

No matter how they try to spin it, when big companies merge its always bad for the consumer. It also usually means forthcoming layoffs for many of the employees also.

kvrdave

I was split on the issue. They do have competition from cable companies, but at the same time there are a lot of people who do not have access to cable who would be subject to their whim.

Probably a good thing that it did not go.