There's good news and bad news about Cablevision's (NYSE:CVC) operating footprint centered around New York City. On the one hand, it's a great place to be -- it's extremely concentrated and has very desirable demographics for a multiservice provider like Cablevision. On the other hand, that's exactly what makes it so desirable to the competition.

For now, the Cablevision plan continues to work. The company not only posted better-than-16% revenue growth, but operating income and EBITDA grew, and the net loss was smaller than in the prior year's quarter. There was also a good news/bad news element to the underlying fundamentals. The company saw rather good subscriber adds and good growth in revenues per subscriber, but they appear to have spent a fair bit on marketing to get them.

It'll be interesting to see how the Cablevision story plays out over time. After all, Verizon (NYSE:VZ) is a player in Cablevision's most desirable markets, and this large telco isn't laying a bunch of fiber just because they like digging holes in the ground. I'm somewhat more optimistic on the future of satellite television (DirecTV (NYSE:DTV) and EchoStar (NASDAQ:DISH)) and their ability to compete in the relatively higher-value video portion of the video/telco/broadband bundle.

I think it's also fair to ask what the controllers of this company have in mind for its future. The Dolan family has made some odd decisions in the past and has been criticized for them. It may be conceivable, then, that they just want to take the company private and do as they please with it, without having to answer to thousands of shareholders. And the recent $3 billion special dividend certainly doesn't impede that process, since it reduced shareholder equity and also the amount of debt the Dolans would have to take on in a go-private offer.

When it comes down to the bottom line, this is a tricky stock and I'm not really steadfast in my conclusions today. I think this is a collection of valuable assets, but I'm not sure that the mid-teens appreciation potential that I see is really enough to get me excited (especially relative to the risks that the Dolans will do something bizarre and/or competition will step up). I probably wouldn't sell if I owned it, but I'd prefer to wait for a better entry price for new money.

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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).