Corporate Sunset

Pondering the circumstances that led to the retirement of a 64-year-old cable brand in a merger. Turns out, brand loyalty matters less than we thought.If you bear with me, I’d like to discuss cable providers with you for a second. Yeah, yeah, I know, not the most exciting thing. These are not well-loved companies.And yet, I feel a bit of a way about the loss of one of the legacy cable television providers, Cox Communications, in the midst of a massive merger. It was the oldest of the massive original providers still standing, having beaten Comcast to the cable game by about a year. (Adelphia was born earlier, but it died in a blaze of embarrassment.) And it’s being more or less written over by Charter Communications, whose Spectrum brand name is being used in former Cox markets starting this week.(Cox is still technically a subsidiary of Charter, but let’s be honest: How long will this arrangement really last?)Cox, which was formed as an offshoot of the still-existing media empire Cox…