Farewell, Time Warner Cable; Nobody Is Going To Miss You

Image courtesy of Photo Nut 2011

The most-loathed company in all of America is soon to be no more. With the merger of Charter and Time Warner Cable approved and under way, the widely-detested TWC brand is soon to be up on the chopping block.

As Bloomberg reports, the three-way megadeal in which Charter will be purchasing TWC and Bright House Networks officially closes today, and that means the beginning of the end for all the brands involved that aren’t Charter.

A company spokesman confirmed to Bloomberg that the New Charter will be phasing out the TWC and Bright House names over time, bringing all 24 million of the giant company’s new customers in-house under the Charter Spectrum umbrella.

“While Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers will not see any immediate change, the company will be called Charter and the products and services will be marketed under the ‘Spectrum’ brand,” the spokesman told Bloomberg in an e-mail.

It’s pretty common for mergers to unite all their formerly-disparate brands under one name. AT&T, for example, is slowly killing off the DirecTV and Uverse product names in favor of a unified front. Likewise, airline mergers of recent years have seen new behemoths keeping one name (United) and one logo (Continental) for a hybrid approach, or just keeping the better-liked name (American) and encouraging us to forget the old one (US Airways).

And really, ditching the TWC name might be the best, easiest thing Charter can do to start making a good impression on the pile of new customers they’re inheriting. TWC is vastly, enormously unpopular. Not only are they among the most-hated TV/broadband companies, but also they are in fact the worst-rated company in the country, in any industry.

It’s not new, either: Time Warner Cable has been performing at the back of the pack, or even dead last, for several years running.

That said, TWC customers probably shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for everything to get better just yet. Upgrading infrastructure, training employees, and learning how not to completely suck at customer service are all long-term, hard-to-make changes.

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