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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

Pre-emptive reminder (especially since not everyone will read the full article with the paywall):

Time Warner Cable was spun out from Time Warner, Inc. seven years ago, and they no longer have any relationship with each other. Time Warner Cable was permitted to continue using the name under license, though they are now trying to rebrand themselves as "Spectrum" in markets where they already had a presence (such as New York City).

AT&T is reportedly talking about buying Time Warner, Inc, which is a media conglomerate that owns either part or all of brands like Warner Bros, CNN, DC Comics, and Hulu.

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> rebrand themselves as "Spectrum" in markets where they already had a presence (such as New York City)

Is that a nice way of saying they're rebranding themselves to anyone already familiar with the brand. The assumption being anyone familiar with the brand has a negative image of it :)

This is generally the goal of any re-branding. It would be illogical to attempt re-branding against a successful, known property.

it could be that the licensing fees on the name are a significant enough drag on revenue, and/or the agreement has an expiration date and there's an expectation that the licenser won't renew the agreement.

I've been a part of situations like that. You can try and get ahead of it like TW is doing now where you create the second name ahead of time and try to build up the recognition and awareness around it in advance.

Time Warner Cable was bought by Charter, and the Spectrum "rebranding" is Charter's existing name for cable services. If there are continuing licensing fees for using the Time Warner name, I don't see why Charter would continue using it over its own brand name.

Spectrum is Charter's branding. And with Charter buying out TWC, they seem to simply be unifying the two brands under the name Spectrum.

I agree that "rebranding" is a seriously uncharitable interpretation of the circumstances.

Charter also bought Bright House at the same time as Time Warner Cable. They are all being brought under the Spectrum name, which was and is Charter's pre-existing name for their cable services.

This is not the scenario at all that "rebranding" invokes. Especially not in the context that chimeracoder uses it. See ssharp's post [0] for an example of what the typical interpretation would be.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12762492

And don't forget that Time Warner used to be part of AOL/Time Warner, of which the AOL part is now owned by Verizon.

However, this potential transaction would be more similar to the Comcast purchase of NBC/Universal.

At this point in company history/complexity they should combine PR releases about acquisitions with venn or flow charts about their ownerships.

Which gets even wilder once you start to take in how many board members serve on multiple boards... There was a website, I forget the name of right now, that once let you play "six degrees" between any two publicly traded companies by following shared board members. If I recall the average distance was quite low.

And with the growth of index funds, the stockholders are all the same, too.

Hmm, your forgetting that Time Warner Cable was recently purchased by Charter and that the Time Warner Cable brand will be going away for good. (replaced by charter)

> Hmm, your forgetting that Time Warner Cable was recently purchased by Charter and that the Time Warner Cable brand will be going away for good. (replaced by charter)

No, it's being replaced by Spectrum (which is a brand Charter already owned).

I can confirm this firsthand - when my service went out last week, I called the same number I have stored in my contacts[0], and the automated greeting introduced itself with both the old and new name.

[0] The fact that I have TWC's support number in my contacts should tell you exactly what I think of their service

Right, so it's not exactly "trying to rebrand itself". It's getting rolled in to an existing brand as the result of a merger.

Copying my post from another subthread: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763833)

I agree that "rebranding" is a seriously uncharitable interpretation of the circumstances.

Charter also bought Bright House at the same time as Time Warner Cable. They are all being brought under the Spectrum name, which was and is Charter's pre-existing name for their cable services.

This is not the scenario at all that "rebranding" invokes. Especially not in the context that chimeracoder uses it. See ssharp's post [0] for an example of what the typical interpretation would be.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12762492

Congratulations then. Charter is by far the best cable company I've ever dealt with.

I was gonna make a snarky comment about how you should move to Central Florida so you could experience Bright House Networks, then I remembered Charter bought them earlier this year...

I've been seriously worried about what will happen to Bright House. I've talked to every tech that's come to my house the past year [0], and they all say that Charter has been very open about how Bright House does things, so I'm keeping hope...

I know techs are not always the most knowledgeable about business direction. But I figure if four people all individually say the same thing, there might be something to it.

[0] I've had quite a few, thanks to cutting through my line while gardening, and a lightning strike through the cable lines.

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