Don't look now, but the cord-cutting trend continues for Comcast. Though the country's largest cable provider tried to mask its woes with upbeat spin in its quarterly report, Comcast is serving 577,000 fewer households than it was a year ago.
Waiting for the cable guy, the Internet guy, or the air conditioner guy are tedious life necessities, like doing laundry or visiting the in-laws. But they are vastly more expensive. According to a new poll, American workers lost a total of $37.7 billion waiting around for in-house appointments in 2011.
Noticed that your local movie theater is a little quieter than usual lately? Don't go thinking that moviegoers have just gotten more considerate. The reason phones aren't ringing, babies aren't wailing, and know-it-alls aren't giving away plot twists before they happen is simple: People just aren't there.
It's been awfully quiet on the earnings front in recent weeks, and there's a reason: This is the time of year when accountants are nailing down the financials for the fiscal quarters that ended in September. Later this week, the conference calls will begin trickling in, and then it will be a deluge of quarterly reports until early November.
There's never a shortage of silliness when it comes to Wall Street. Some of last week's biggest surprises and head-shaking blunders included a farcical mistake on the AP's list of same-store sales for September, Apple's failure to deliver the iPhone 5, Comcast's plan to charge $60 for a movie, and Best Buy's music streaming surrender.
Plenty of big names are set to report their earnings in August, including the country's largest cable and satellite television providers, several of China's leading dot-coms, radio giant Sirius XM, car rental companies Zipcar and Avis, and the two biggest video game developers.
There's trouble brewing at Redbox: President Mitch Lowe has announced his resignation, and parent company Coinstar revised its second-quarter revenue outlook downward last week. Here are some key signs consumers and investors should watch to see if the Redbox business model (i.e. kiosk rental machines) is obsolete.
Comcast has announced that it will soon offer a high-def Skype video calling service on the TVs of its cable customers. But will people have any interest in using Skype on their televisions when they can already use it on mobile devices and PCs?
Google's video-sharing site, YouTube, is giving Netflix investors a little scare with its recent announcement that it has doubled the number of movie titles in its rental library to 6,000. But could YouTube's strategy be successful enough that it could directly compete with Netflix?
Regulators have begun to take a long, hard look at whether the AT&T buyout of T-Mobile would create a quasi-monopoly in the American cellular carrier industry. If those antitrust concerns sink the deal, AT&T could be in real trouble, because cellular is its only clear hope for growth.
Most subscribers to Dish Network probably picked the satellite television provider based on its low cost. But now that Dish has purchased the library of one-time movie rental powerhouse Blockbuster, it's poised to compete with the likes of Netflix for the streaming-video market.
As the NFL lockout continues, television networks -- which spent billions of dollars to secure broadcasting rights to National Football League games -- are scrambling to fill what could become a gaping hole in their programming schedules.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway liquidated its positions in a number of high-profile companies during the fourth quarter, but the Oracle of Omaha has hung on to his huge stake in Coca-Cola. And Coke's nearly 4% drop is a weight on Buffett's portfolio.
