Cablevision Systems Corporation (CVC), first discussed here on May 29, 2009 at a price of $19.03, posted sub-par first quarter earnings per share of 26 cents -- the First Call estimate was 33 cents -- and the shares were hit hard. Even so, the view from here argues now may be a good time to scoop-up some CVC shares at a discount.

Look for CVC to post 2-4% telecom revenue growth in 2010, with better than 200,000 new revenue generating units. Cablevision's iDigital cable unit (2.9 million subscribers) and Optimum high-speed broadband service (2.6 million subscribers) should add enough subscribers to keep institutional investors happy. Further, DVR market share growth still has considerable upside, particularly given the company's strong presence in a lucrative market (New York City area).

At least initially, investors liked what they saw in Comcast Corporation's (CMCSA) first quarter report, during which the company earned 31 cents, above the Thomson/Reuters First Call first quarter EPS estimate of 30 cents. Shares rose
30 cents to $18.76 in Wednesday afternoon trading, despite a choppy market.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable television operator, said it added 399,000 high-speed Internet subscribers and 373,000 phone customers in the first quarter. Comcast lost 82,000 basic video subscribers, but average revenue per video subscriber increased 6.3% to $122.98 per month. The company earned 27 cents per share a year ago, in the first quarter of 2009.

This was a day which could have gone either way. The markets recovered this morning despite weakness in overseas markets in reaction to yesterday's S&P downgrading of Portugal and Greece credit worthiness. Today came another S&P downgrade of Spain. Then the FOMC kept rates steady and maintained its "extended period" period for that no to low rate policy.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 11,045.27 +53.28 (0.48%)
Nasdaq 2,471.73 +0.26 (0.01%)
S&P 500 1,191.36 +7.65 (0.65%)

I'm reiterating my buy rating for Comcast Corp (CMCSA), first recommended on April 22, 2009, at a price of $14.05. Here's why:

Comcast still looks attractive, on a revenue-growth basis, even without the proposed 51% stake purchase of NBC Universal from General Electric Company (GE) for $13.75 billion, subject to federal regulatory approvals.

Much-maligned Cablevision Systems Corporation (CVC) is getting its act together, which is one reason I'm reiterating my buy rating for the company share's, first recommended on May 29, 2009 at a price of $19.03. If you bought CVC in May, you're up about 30%.

Look for a 2-4% revenue increase for CVC in 2010, led by telecom subscriber increases, but weighed-down by below-trend cable TV subscriber growth.

Readers of this space know that the investment bias is toward large-cap companies with demonstrated business models and who have a competitive advantage in established markets. And with the aforementioned in mind, Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA) is worth a review.

In general, analysts see Comcast's revenue increasing 7-9% in FY 2009, including accounting for basic subscriber attrition/loses. Local advertising trends are bearish, but look for Comcast to continue to score gains in video services, commercial data, and phone customers.

Until recently, I believed that shares of Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) had been unfairly punished by investors who were too skeptical about the company's prospects. Now, I am changing my tune because I have come to realize that the future of the company will be filled with endless pricing battles, which will force the Philadelphia-based cable giant to sacrifice the needs of shareholder to retain customers.

To be fair, Comcast reported a decent quarter Wednesday and was able to hold the line on capital expenditures. Net income was $632 million, or 21 cents a share, versus $588 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier. Sales jumped 11% to $8.55 billion. Results were short of the 23-cent forecast of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg but beat the $8.57 billion sales forecast.

Now, ordinarily missing the profit forecast would cause the shares to tank. Instead, they are trading up slightly because investors found much about the earnings report to like. For one thing, Comcast's free cash flow was $1.17 billion, more than triple from a year earlier. This beat the forecast of veteran cable industry watchers such as Craig Moffett of Sanford C. Bernstein. It also reaffirmed its earnings guidance for the year, countering worries that it would be hurt by cash-strapped customers falling behind in their bills.

NBC Universal, which is a part of GE (NYSE: GE), has apparently agreed to shell out $3.5 billion for the Weather Channel. The deal involves a partnership with two marquee private equity firms: Bain Capital LLC and Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX).

The transaction has weathered the credit crunch -- as well as survived a gestation period that has gone on for most of 2008. But, in the end, it looks like NBC got a nice deal (keep in mind that it looked like the Weather Channel tried to snag $5 billion or so).

The Weather Channel has extensive distribution (#3 in the US). What's more, there will be synergy with NBC's digital weather property, Weather Plus. Oh, and NBC has lots of experience integrating cable companies, such as Bravo and Sci Fi.

Although, perhaps the most important part of the deal is weather.com, which gets 36+ million unique visitors per month. This ranks it as the #15 site on the web. No doubt, NBC can leverage its advertising -- as well as other websites -- across this virtual real estate.

Finally, the Weather Channel transaction points to a possible new model for private equity; that is, partnering with strategic buyers. It's a good way to deploy capital but also get cost/revenue synergies.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

For every person who had to wait forever for Time Warner Cable, Inc. (NYSE: TWC) to pick up the phone, for every customer who had to slog through an automated voice menu, then stew waiting to talk to a person, for every family that went days without TV or internet, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo struck a blow Friday. On behalf of the city of Los Angeles, Delgadillo sued the top cable provider for southern California, saying its service was so bad it constituted fraud and deceptive advertising.

The city wants $2,500 for each instance, double if the victim was old or disabled. Part of the problem in Los Angeles stemmed from the company's complicated task of absorbing Comcast and Adelphia customers, not everyday business. Consumers had filed their own civil suit a while back.

Time Warner Cable stock dropped $1.23, or about 4%, Friday on somewhat heavy trading. The damages could add up to potentially millions of dollars. Or it could be one of those lame settlements that give customers useless coupons.

The direct impact of the civil suit isn't as much of a big deal -- yet -- as the broader implications. What if other cities or customers sue? How is this suit going to influence the opinion of someone who's deciding between Time Warner and Dish Network or DirecTV? Between Roadrunner and wireless broadband? For a long time, cable providers could offer lousy service because there was basically no competition. Now, they have to behave better or lose customers. Now that could be real money.

Cable operator Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), a competitor of DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) and DISH Network (NASDAQ: DISH), issued its first-quarter earnings report on Thursday, and overall it was a satisfying set of data. Revenues grew 14% to $8.4 billion. Adjusted earnings per share increased 12% to $0.19 (on a reported basis, however, they did decline by 8%). One of my favorite things to look at is free cash flow -- Comcast scored here, as free cash jumped 59% to over $700 million.

I've never owned Comcast stock, and I'm on record as preferring content companies over distribution platforms. That being said, I do have to say that Comcast is a pretty good name in its industry, and that it seems to be doing quite well with its various offerings. Looking through the earnings release, I see that Comcast added close to half-a-million digital cable customers. The high-speed internet service and digital-phone service also seem to be performing (on an anecdotal level, it does feel like more and more people are taking up the triple-play suite that Comcast is constantly promoting). The programming segment, which includes channels such as E! and The Golf Channel, saw revenues increase 20% and it delivered a nice stream of cash flow. The company bought back almost 2% of its outstanding shares, and management plans to buy more under its repurchase initiative.

If you're looking to get in on the stock, I'd wait for a pullback after Thursday's 8% pop in share price. Like I say, I do like content companies, but Comcast might be an interesting long-term idea, since it will probably be the beneficiary of a desire on the part of media conglomerates such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) to engage more digital distribution via video-on-demand and to, in fact, experiment with day-and-date release (which I talked about in a recent piece). If this paradigm ever hits a critical mass, then Comcast should do well with it.

Disclosure: I own shares in Disney; positions can change at any time.

The Wall Street Journal suggests that cable stocks, which have sold off sharply over the last three quarters, might now be a good investment. That is probably wrong. The paper says that "while cable stocks lately have bounced from bottoms hit earlier this year, they still are trading at 10-year lows along several key metrics."

But, cable has never had so much competition and that is likely to grow. Firms such as Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) are up against new fiber-to-the-home TV and broadband offerings from telecom companies, especially Verizon (NYSE:VZ). The phone firm's FiOS product is picking up customers and it has not been rolled out in most of the 18 million homes where Verizon has customers.

The phone companies have a special advantage. They can bundle cellular, broadband, TV, and landline service to individual customers and give them "one-stop shopping."

Cable is also up against new and improved products from satellite TV companies. Firms like DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) are adding a number of HD channels. Cable does not always have the bandwidth to put as many of these channels on its systems.

Cable stocks are down because competition is way up. Much of that has come recently and it is likely to get worse.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Verizon (NYSE: VZ)'s roll-out of HDTV and broadband with its fiber-to-the-home product looked so promising. It even got shareholders in cable companies nervous. They were worried that the phone company would start to take away their digital cable TV customers.

All of that was looking very good for Verizon until it started to run out of the set-top boxes that make the HDTV system work in homes. As if things were not bad enough for Motorola (NYSE: MOT), it looks like the company's set-top operation may be at fault. The Wall Street Journal says ,"a Motorola spokeswoman confirmed that demand for the HD set-top box was 'strong and has exceeded expectations. We are pleased with this positive response and we are working closely with our suppliers to ensure that we meet the needs of our customers as quickly as possible.'"

What a lot of bull. While the market may never know where the mix-up was, Verizon certainly knows how many customers it plans to add and its inventory of boxes. Motorola knows what the demand is across its customer base and whether its manufacturing can handle the load.

Either way, Verizon has given its competition a gift. Who wants high-speed wiring that won't work with the TV?

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Back in August, I labeled Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) as a 'slacker stock,' "which like its human equivalent spends his days sitting on the coach playing video games in his underwear and whining about his lot in life." Now, the world's largest cable company, which has dropped more than 30% this year, has finally grown up.

The Philadelphia-based company reported that net income soared 54% to $602 million, or 20 cents per share, beating the 17 cent consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Sales surged 14% to $8.01 billion, also beating analysts' expectations. As if that wasn't enough, Comcast also announced a $6.9 billion stock buyback and said it would begin paying its first dividend in almost 10 years. The company's guidance also was strong. Particularly noteworthy was the expected decline of capital expenditures as a percentage of revenue to 18%. Revenue and operating cash flow is expected to grow 8% to 10% with free cash flow jumping 20% to $2.3 billion.

Comcast seems to be listening to the complaints of shareholders who are concerned about the company's poor stock performance. Whether this will make Chieftain Capital Management, which last month called for the ouster of CEO Brian Roberts, remains to be seen. One quarter is not a trend.

My wife and I are not sure whether we am sticking with the company's triple play deal that expires at the end of the month or switch to Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)'s FiOS. I bet I am not alone. It will be interesting to see if the company's churn rate starts to increase in the coming months.

Looks like Al Gore, the world's most prominent environmentalist, also is interested in the type of green that you put in your bank account. The former vice president and Nobel prize winner's company, Current Media, told the SEC today that it plans to raise as much as $100 million through an IPO.

His timing, though, couldn't have been worse. Bloomberg News reports that about 24 companies have canceled IPOs in the past month, the most in a decade. So what makes Al Gore, the company's executive chairman, and his partner Joel Hyatt, the CEO, think the time is right for Current Media? I have no idea.

For one thing, the parent of the Current TV cable channel, is almost $32 million in the red and neither Gore nor Joel Hyatt have any agreement to either remain employed by the company or maintain their stock ownership at particular levels, according to a filing with the SEC.

Interestingly, Current Media pays its executives pretty well. Gore and Hyatt both earned more than $1.04 million in compensation from the company in 2007. Both have also lent the San Francisco-based company $1 million each, the filing said.

Odds are pretty good that this IPO isn't going to happen. Current Media, though, would make an attractive acquisition target for a media conglomerate such as Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) or Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) because it attracts a young audience that advertisers covet. Rupert Murdoch probably would like the company as well, but I doubt that Gore would ever be able to show his face at Earth Day again if he sold out to News Corp (NYSE: NWS).

Chieftain Capital Management, which manages 60.5 million Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) shares, wants to oust CEO Brian Roberts.

Roberts, though, is not going anywhere. His father founded the no. 1 cable company and his family retains a controlling interest. But the Chieftain move shows what a desperate investor will do when shares in a company drop more than 40% in a year. In the case of Comcast, it is an exercise in futility.

Chieftain, which owns about 2% of the outstanding shares, wants Comcast to borrow money and return cash to shareholders. The company could do that, or it could use the cash to improve infrastructure to more effectively compete against the phone companies. The long-term views of entrenched founders are put against the shareholder who wants the quick return.

What Chieftain does not want to acknowledge is that cable is going through an industry-wide drop in share prices. Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and other similar companies have also seen their stocks fall sharply due to a slowing economy, the FCC's attempt to increase regulation, and competing offerings from telephone companies.

Chieftain might as well save its breath and take the fight elsewhere.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.