This morning, Comcast Corporation and Time Warner Cable, Inc. announced a deal wherein Comcast would acquire Time Warner Cable for north of $45 billion. Naturally, a few regulatory hurdles remain, but the potential impact of the purchase is palpable. The acquisition would make Comcast by far the largest pay-TV provider in the United States; according to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association the two companies combine to serve approximately 30 million customers, which would account for approximately one-third of all U.S. pay-TV subscriptions.This merger is particularly interesting when one considers the content implications. Vertical integration is nothing new to the television market in the United States. Despite the spin-off of Time Warner Cable from Time Warner and the decline of vertically integrated entertainment companies over the past 20 years, there may be resurgence in the business that we have not seen since the “Golden Age” of Hollywood. At that time, major studios controlled nearly every aspect of the motion picture industry.