The New Yorker's Ken Auletta offers up his opinion about why Comcast is acquiring Time Warner Cable and he says it's all about leverage:

Against this backdrop we can start to sort out why, on Thursday, the largest cable-systems owner, Comcast, agreed to acquire the second-largest, Time Warner Cable, for more than forty-five billion dollars. Comcast, the most technologically advanced of the primitive cable-box proprietors, wants more leverage. Size, plus ownership of high-speed Internet connections, will grant it more power at the bargaining table with program networks and Internet platforms.

There’s another thing. The deal allows Comcast to offer the most advanced video-on-demand service, giving its customers an array of program choices, while denying them the ability to skip commercials. The problem is that making consumers watch commercials—or charging them a monthly fee to avoid ads—is an exercise of power that is doomed to fail. A generation has grown accustomed to watching ad-free Netflix and HBO, and to recording programs on cable boxes. Already, two-thirds of those who use TiVo to record shows skip the ads.