PODCAST: Cable mega-merger

Comcast is trying to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion. Comcast, already the No. 1 cable provider in the U.S., will get 8 million more subscribers and 30 percent of the market. That figure includes a proposed divestment of about 3 million customers that Comcast is offering to assuage anti-competition concerns. Comcast would get access to cable markets in Los Angeles and New York City, and together the companies would save $1.5 billion in operating costs, more than half of which would be saved in the first year according to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.

In California, there’s an argument about whether the hub innovation known as Silicon Valley would be a richer or poorer place if left more to its own devices. This week,  we’ve heard about the case for moving innovation out to sea, outside the limits of regulation. There’s also a bid to take Silicon Valley and make it its own state. Today, another sense of the word “island,”  the criticism that Northern California’s tech community is sometimes insular: The bus.