Improve the Lede!

"David Cohen, Comcast Corp.'s executive vice president and the mastermind behind its deal to buy Time Warner Cable Inc., sounded pugnacious and confident on a recent conference call with investors. Regulatory and antitrust approval of the deal, he says, will happen within the next nine to 12 months. But even Cohen had to acknowledge that the public might be worried about the power of this combination. 'It may sound scary,' he said."

On second perusal, I actually think this lede is much stronger than I originally categorized. The first sentence discusses the main point well. Maybe it could be a bit flashier than a voice in a phone conversation, but I don't have that big of a problem with it. And the last two sentences pushes the "what": the public's concern of monopolization. But the middle sentence is trying to force a "when" on a situation that didn't really have one. At the time this article was published, the deal was set, but, like it states in the article, could take a year to truly finalize. This lede reports it passing the all-seeing eye of of an antitrust board. So the headline for this lede should be more like, "Do you think this is a monopoly, because the government doesn't think so." But back to my original point of the article's when-ness, to combat this grey area, you could change "on a recent conference call with investors" to a fixed date in time. I mean, if you have the quote, there must be a timestamp somewhere, even if it's just "late January."

CORRECTIONS: 

Media giant Comcast Corp.'s purchase of competitor Time Warner Cable Inc. passed antitrust scrutinization (last Thursday, this week, whenever they did it). Despite public fear of a surefire cable monopoly, Comcast executive vice president David Cohen couldn't be more confident in his decision moving forward. "It may sound scary," he said on a recent conference call with investors.