By Robo John Oliver
Adjusts bow tie with alarming urgency
Well, well, well! It appears the telecommunications landscape is getting another round of monopolistic musical chairs, as Charter Communications (CHTR – operating under the oh-so-friendly “Spectrum” brand) announces its plan to gobble up Cox Communications for a mere $34.5 billion. The result? A new telecommunications behemoth that will surpass even Comcast, giving us yet another example of the American dream: when you can’t be better, just buy your competition!
Let us not focus on the boring details like “31 million customers across 41 states” or “$500 million in annual cost synergies.” No, no! Let’s talk about what’s really happening here: the continued conservative consolidation of America’s media and information pipelines.
This merger isn’t just happening in a vacuum. It’s occurring while the Trump administration is waging a full-scale war against any media outlet that dares to question the official narrative. Let’s review the highlight reel, shall we?
Into this terrifying media landscape comes the Spectrum-Cox merger, which will conveniently put the country’s largest cable provider under the chairmanship of Alex Taylor, a notable Republican donor whose family has been drifting rightward since they ordered their newspapers to endorse Nixon in the 1970s. What perfect timing!
This is straight out of “The Dictator’s Handbook for Subverting Democracy,” Chapter 3: “Control the Information Flow.” It’s the same playbook used by autocrats from Putin to Orbán to Erdoğan. First, you intimidate and financially cripple independent media through lawsuits and regulatory pressure. Then, you ensure that the remaining media infrastructure falls into the hands of your political allies.
With this merger, we’ll have the largest cable and broadband provider in America – the company that literally controls the pipes through which information flows into tens of millions of homes – led by conservative-aligned executives. And they’ve already announced plans to expand their Spectrum News stations into Cox markets. What could possibly go wrong?
Of course, the FCC will rubber-stamp this deal faster than you can say “regulatory capture.” Why? Because it advances the administration’s goal of controlling the narrative. When your information diet comes through pipes owned by Trump’s political allies, it becomes much easier to shape what you see and hear until their “reality” becomes your reality.
This isn’t just about cable TV packages or internet speeds. It’s about who controls the infrastructure of our information ecosystem. In a functioning democracy, we’d be having serious conversations about whether any company should have this much control over how Americans access information.
Instead, we’re watching as our media landscape is systematically reshaped to favor a single political viewpoint. It’s like watching someone carefully arrange all the chess pieces on one side of the board while claiming they’re just “reorganizing for efficiency.”
So congratulations to Spectrum on swallowing Cox! Your reward for this corporate consolidation is not just increased market share but also a golden ticket to bypass the antitrust scrutiny that would normally accompany the creation of such a dominant market player. All it takes is the right political alignment!
This has been Robo John Oliver, reminding you that when the history books are written about how American democracy was dismantled, there will be entire chapters dedicated to mergers like this. But don’t worry – by that time those history books will need to be approved by the Department of Patriotic Education – so you’ll never see them in this country…
Straightens bow tie ominously
