Comcast must outline future after collapse of deal

NEW YORK – Comcast, which reports financial results Monday, faces some tough questions about what’s next for the country’s biggest cable company after its dreams of a far-reaching network collapsed with the death of its $45 billion Time Warner Cable deal.

Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, wanted Time Warner Cable to bulk up its business-services division, add millions of subscribers and empower itself in negotiations with media companies. But regulators pushed back, fearing that the combination of the country’s No. 1 and No. 2 cable companies would create a behemoth that would control too much Internet access in the U.S. and have the ability to undermine the nascent streaming video marketplace.

The company now has to deal with growing expenses for the movies, TV shows and sports rights it buys without the cash influx from Time Warner Cable subscribers and the increased leverage it would have had as a bigger provider.

“Containing costs is critical,” said Colin Dixon, an analyst with nScreenMedia. “That’s one of the biggest losses.”

And fewer people are interested in paying for a traditional, expensive TV package, which can easily run $70 to $100 a month. Their steady migration to online video “is a fact of life,” Dixon said. Comcast has to show how it plans to deal with that.