Philadelphia cable television operator Comcast Corp put the kibosh on the proposed merger between CBS Inc and QVC Inc late Tuesday when it came in with a counterbid for QVC, in which it was a founder shareholder and still has 15.4%. CBS said yesterday that as a result, its marriage with QVC was off. Comcast is offering $2,200m for the home shopping network, a cash and paper combination that it values at $44 a share. Comcast bid because it did not like the idea of the combination with CBS, which it says would have left it as a 4.9% shareholder with no management role. Comcast has about 2.7m cable subscribers and provides cellular phone service to more than 300,000 US customers.
