It would have been tough to ignore the Consumerist's annual search for the Worst Company in America even if two cable operators, Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC-WI) hadn't made it nearly impossible.
Comcast sent out a company-wide e-mail encouraging employees to vote for Charter Communications (Nasdaq: CHTR) as the worst company. The effort, despite drawing national attention, failed and Comcast beat Charter to move into competition against Best Buy in the Sweet 16.
Time Warner Cable did its own thing to draw attention when a company rep (perhaps) sent a company logo along with the note: "I work at Time Warner Cable and we have recently within the past 6 months refreshed our brand identity/logos and in the brackets on the Worst Company in America our old logo is being used. Is there any way that it can be updated to use our new logo? I have attached two colors of the new logo for you to pick, we're happy with either one." Remarkably (for a cable company) that smacks of a little tongue-in-cheek humor.
Anyway, Time Warner Cable, too, vanquished its first round competition and is now in a fight it should lose with BP. Others from the pay TV space that made it through the first round: DirecTV (Nasdaq: DTV) over Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH); Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) over Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and AT&T (NYSE: T) over Verizon (NYSE: VZ). A reminder: Winning in this competition equates to losing.
For more:
- see this news release
- and this news release
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