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John Malone makes the unimaginably terrifying market power of a combined Comcast-Charter seem so ... real
Also this week, our 'Next Text' column looks at 'Inside the NBA' and its big move to ESPN, Disney's huge Q3 streaming numbers, and Netflix's massive audience for a fumbled live stream of a crappy fight
Daniel Frankel
November 18, 2024
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Paramount Global
John Malone: ‘Charter should be allowed to merge with Comcast or Cox or T-Mobile or anybody’
Even for a TMT titan like John Malone, known for bold, decisive shakeups, it must have seemed a pretty fateful week.
The 83-year-old Liberty Media mogul merged Charter Communications and Liberty Broadband, while letting go his longtime CEO, Greg Maffei. The moves simplify Liberty’s holdings into separately traded stocks.
Malone will now lead the holding company in a role he describes as “transitional,” as he looks for a top executive who can restructure Liberty’s board and reorient it to focus on Formula 1 racing.
Malone explained it all with CNBC’s David Faber on earnings day:
Malone framed the discussion as an aging mogul looking to steer his company into new, more profitable businesses (that may not even be in media), while stepping back to find an “operational CEO that can run the holding company.”
But like many other top TMT executives, Malone is gleefully predicting a sane, logical, chaos-free, Republican-led regulatory regime that will unleash previously unimaginable M&A activity.
Think giant regional monopolies living together.
Governments and regulators should consider that wireless companies have national footprints, and technologists like Elon Musk have “the globe,” Malone said. Why should cable operators be confined to regions?
“I think that Charter should be allowed to merge with Comcast or Cox or T-Mobile or anybody,” Malone declared. “I think tying an industry’s hands behind its back, and letting big tech run wild in any direction they choose to run in is inappropriate.”
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