david gelles, you tweeted, in surprise at how quickly this moved along. was there no long mating dance did a before this announcement? >> these two companies have been in touch over the years. what's happened over the last couple of months is that charter communications has really made a push to try to get a deal done with time warner cable. now, time warner cable was never comfortable with this idea. charter was going to have to take on a lot of debt to get the deal done. they wanted to do a good portion of the deal in stock. and time warner cable believed charter stock after a deal would not be that valuable conduction see. when rob marcus took over as ceo of time warner cable just last month in january, he quietly reached out to brian roberts, the ceo of comcast, we have recently learned. he said, let's restart these deal talks. over the last couple of deeds, those deal talks proceeded but even then they couldn't get there. after brian roberts went out a road show, after fourth quarter earnings on january 28th and he heard from comcast's main investors

those conditions are >> david gelles, with big mergers of this kind, often the parties going in to theprocess concede that they are going to have to do some things to sweeten the deal before the regulators. baron mentioned some of those steps. do we know publicly what the two companies plan as their pitch to the regulators involved to make sure that there is no market control anti-trust problems? >> well, some of that was just covered. but there is also another interesting little deal technique that everyone on wall street is scrutinizing today. >> that's the absence of a reverse break fee, which is to say that there is no stipulation that if the deal falls apart that comcast would have to pays time warner cable a billion dollars, $2,000,000,000 that sometimes shows up in deals like this that attract some anti-trust scrutiny but in this case, the parties decided that not having a break fee is actually a sign of streamed and a sign of faith that the deal will get done. some of the last minute negotiations, we have learned, were actually time warner cable saying, okay. we will go alone w

supposed to save 1 and a half billion dollars in efficiencies of running the two companies together david gelless. does this position the company in a different way to handle a public that's already starting product? >> certainly. and this is something that brian roberts, the ceo of comcast has been working on for several years. if you look back to the rationale of the nbc/universal deal, that was about creating a company that had both content and distribution. this now, you know, pushes the distribution side, but it impasse sizes the future is going to be over the web, not television pipes. >> the web enters a lot of homes via cable television? >> by far, the number 1 source americans. it's their option if they want truly high speed broadband. >> that's the kind of power cable is going to have over what we watch, see, hear and read and their ability to interfere with that connection in the future after 2018, not that far down t the line s problematic, their ability to potentially impose data caps, their ability to, you know, slow down things like netflix and potential competitors, favor their o

gell travis. the stock has been a great performer. he is up next. davide sochi olympics don't start until tomorrow the games are off tonight mayorish kind of start. athletes and journalists are blowing up twitter with a slew of problems they have seen including pictures. coming up we'll show you some of the most gruesome. you may want to send the kid out of the room. ♪ david: time for a quick speed read, some after the day's other headlines, five stories one minute. sony is selling the pc unit, spinning off the tv business and cuttings 5000 jobs. the japanese electronics group says it expects to lose $1.1 billion in the fiscal year-ended in march. >>> volvo cutting 2400 jobs on top of 2,000 layoffs they announced in october. the job cuts affect management, administrative staff and consultants. >>> amazon acquiring double helix games for undisclosed amount. the retail giant says part of an ongoing commitment to build innovative games for customers. >>> kelley blue book announced annual winners of five-year cost to own with brands lowest ownership cost. bes