Business

5 things consumers need to watch in TWC-Comcast deal

Comcast’s blockbuster $45 billion deal for Time Warner Cable — the Manhattan cable company everyone likes to kvetch about — has tongues wagging from the East Village to East Los Angeles.

The move, which will give Comcast roughly 33 million subscribers from coast to coast, puts both companies’ regulatory legal eagles in the spotlight as rivals look to extract their pound of flesh for supporting the deal.

While Comcast has said it is willing to sell off three million sibs to gain regulatory approval, consumers should consider additional potential fallout.

Namely, here are five things folks should be on the lookout for.

  1. 1. No stream-ream!

    Will Comcast play fair and not throttle back the speed of content streamed over its broadband services by Netflix and others?

    The video streaming company’s lawyers will be pressing regulators for some guarantees to that effect.

    Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — and potentially other content providers, like Apple and Google’s YouTube — will flex regulatory muscles to persuade Washington to establish stricter rules that ensure content reaches consumers’ homes at the same cost and speed other providers offer — including Comcast’s own video streaming service, sources said.

    This way, when you watch Netflix’s “House of Cards” and lots of viral cat videos, Comcast won’t force you to pay extra charges.

  2. 2. NY1 faces an uncertain future

    What will happen to Time Warner Cable’s beloved local cable news channel NY1?

    Sen. Chuck Schumer has been assured by Comcast there are no plans to close it down — but it seems unlikely the new combined cable operator will want to keep funding two 24-hour local news channels. WNBC has its own service.

    Local TV news executives are betting that NY1 bosses get the pink slip while WNBC boss Susan Sullivan takes over.

    “[Comcast] confirmed they are going to keep NY1,” Schumer said in his statement.

    “It seems that local jobs, as well as Pat Kiernan’s ‘In the Papers’ segment,” are not in danger.

    Back in November, TWC spent money rebranding its local channels and drew laughs by rechristening the service Time Warner Cable NY1.

  3. 3. Air force

    Look for other pay-TV providers like Dish and DirecTV to go big or go home and consider merging, says Vetere Group’s Tim Hanlon.

    The two companies have said that a merger is a logical idea but they need regulatory cover. The Comcast deal could provide just that.

  4. 4. The new Madmen

    With the combined Comcast-TWC having a footprint in practically all the top markets, it will become another large national advertising platform able to give Madison Avenue plenty of specific subscriber data.

    That means the new Comcast-TWC entity will be able to collect both TV-viewing and web-surfing habits that it can then sell to advertisers, who will be able to target — much more effectively — your TV with ads you can use.

    This will placate advertisers, who have been looking to cable operators in the past to share their set-top box data along with web-surfing habits to target customers more effectively.

    Both Netflix and Apple would both like to be inside the set-top box.

  5. 5. Brand alive?

    Is the Time Warner Cable brand going to die?

    Experts say TWC is the weaker of the two brands and is more likely to be replaced by Comcast.

    “The problem with cable companies is that they’re thought of as something akin to a utility, and therefore there isn’t strong brand loyalty,” branding expert Jordan Rednor, with Protagonist, told The Post.

    TWC has gone through some challenging times, most recently because of the CBS dispute, and they jeopardized their subscriber base,” he said.