Is it a done deal ? The nation's largest cable and broadband provider (Comcast) is merging with NBC Universal. What is the Obama adminsitration about? will it start enforcing anti-trust laws as promised, will the FCC impose conditions for approval (will that matter?) or the status quo of more and more ginormous behemoths owning the public airvwaves. Not opposing this merger and seemingly uninterested in repealing the 1996 Telecom Act which allowed -- no encouraged -- media consolidation to create large, well-capitalized companies that could own multiple media platforms. Just great... that's exactly what's happened here --an unprecedented merger across media platforms: cable, broadccast TV, and Internet, anda corresponding explosion of power to control what people see and hear and what they PAY for that right.
Que sera sera... at least no radio radio stations are involved, and (after GE spins off NBC/Universal) - weapons builder GE will no longer own a controlling interest in media.
Josh Silver of free press.net, writing on huff post
Mega-Media Era Begins: GE-Vivendi Deal Clears Way for Comcast-NBC Merger
December 1.2009
French media giant Vivendi and General Electric agreed to terms that clear the way for cable giant Comcast to take a controlling stake in NBC Universal. The proposed merger would create a media behemoth, and clear the way for an unprecedented era of media consolidation across cable, the Internet and broadcast television. Consumers should be afraid ...
[use link for entire article] .
[Excerpt from Silver article]:
The merged Comcast would be to media what Goldman Sachs is to Wall Street: "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi once described the latter.
excellent discussion of the merger at
http://www.democraticunderground.org/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x27223#27422
1 comments:
Hey Jennifer ! Great blog you got here and it is nice source of media reform information. I very much agree with you that the Comcast-NBC merger is bad for consumers and bad for democracy. There are some reports that this is a done deal but there is a 6 month to year long review that advocates still have to organize around and encourage regulators to well..regulate ! Here is New Media Rights latest blog on the Comcast-NBC merger which I know will be a good resource on this topic for your readers.
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