If Continental want to protect their brand, they need to be sure that the standards on their franchisees or contractors are the same, including customer interface roles. Most McDonald's are franchises, but they have built their empire on providing a predicatable level of service and product no matter where you go.
Of course, this pre-supposes that the "brand" of many US airlines is actually worth anything these days. Most seem to be doing a pretty good job of destroying their reputations by themselves, without any extra help from their regional carriers.
It is certainly possible to maintain the standards even when you have different companies operating the same brand. BA, before they abandoned Bob Ayling's virtual airline concept, had many franchise and partner carriers and the service standards were definitely indistinguishable.
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