Cable TV execs start pushing for nationwide duopoly

If there’s one industry that needs less competition, it’s clearly the cable industry. The Wall Street Journal reports that Liberty Media CEO John Malone and Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge are now preaching “the gospel of consolidation” to their fellow cable executives as they push for the cable industry to become an outright duopoly. Rutledge tells the Journal that he sees the cable industry eventually boiling down to “two major players” that will most likely be Comcast and Time Warner Cable. The Journal reports that Rutledge sees further consolidation as important to the cable industry because it “would help cable companies control costs, giving them more leverage over media companies that supply TV programming, and would put them on stronger footing to invest in new technologies.”