I assume the merger of two mega-corporations that I hate will crreate a mega-mega corporation that I hate even more. Comcast and NBC will now be one super-huge company, and for the first time a cable company (and internet provider) will own one of the major broadcast networks. How this is supposed to benefit the consumer is a major mystery to me. Supposedly, the FCC has imposed conditions that will prevent a repeat of the travesty that happened in New York this fall.
Millions of football fans in the New York area could not access the New York Giants’ game on Sunday because of a carriage dispute between Fox and Cablevision.
The Giants’ home contest against the Detroit Lions was a casualty of the right fee dispute that led to Fox programming being yanked from about 3 million homes in the New York metro area.
Will NBC programming be denied to other providers and competitors of Comcast? Will we see any cost savings to consumers? I don’t care for this merger. I want to see more choice and more competition and smaller media outlets. This moves us in the wrong direction.
Why do you hate NBC on its own? I mean, it seems like you hate them relative to the other networks.
This decision is a travesty. It negates all future attempts to keep content separate from carriers. It offers nothing good to consumers, but enables still more monopolies to freeze out the competition and control the national tv/internet culture for their own selfish interests. The decision is so flagrantly bad that one can’t help wondering what kind of bribes/threats brought it about. There is no other explanation.
Is there any chance this outrage could be reversed by Congress? But I suppose Obama would veto any such attempt even if it somehow succeeded. Once again, Nader is proven right: we are betrayed by the establishment across the political spectrum.
“Nader is proven right”. Big business, as always, runs our nation unfettered.
This moves us in the wrong direction.
We’ve been headed this way ever since Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
This is just the latest merger in a series of media consolidation that has been bad news for our democracy.
I have to disagree. This is more than just another merger. This is the death-knell of any hope to keep content providers separate from distributors. It puts freedom of information a giant step into real danger of becoming an impossible dream.
I wonder if we’ve passed a tipping point in this country. People used to care about these matters. Now, it seems the number of people who really give a damn is dwindling. Not quite sure why.
I don’t know about you, but this is another change that I can believe in.