Bad Start to Comcast’s New Year
Posted January 8th, 2010 by Josh Stearns
The new year has started with a renewed focus on Comcast’s proposed merger with NBC Universal, and it’s not good news for the cable giant. Over the past two days, federal investigators, public interest groups, industry associations and a wide array of nonprofits from across the political spectrum have raised red flags about the merger.
This week, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice has already decided to investigate the antitrust implications of the merger — even though Comcast has yet to file its merger paperwork with the agency. This is a strong statement from the Obama administration and a positive sign that they may follow through on Obama’s campaign statements about reinvigorating antitrust regulation and stopping media consolidation.
Christine Varney, the head of the antitrust division at the DOJ, has taken aggressive positions on vertical mergers in the past. In a 1995 speech, she argued that “Vertical acquisitions can be anticompetitive. Vertical mergers can create or raise entry barriers that lead to higher prices or lower quality or innovation for consumers.”
Yesterday, an ad hoc group of industry, labor and public interest organizations from both the left and the right joined together to express grave concern about the proposed takeover in an open letter to President Obama and Congress. Groups that seldom work on the same side of issues came together around the idea that this merger of media giants would only hurt the media landscape and further diminish diverse and independent voices.
The letter states, “A merger of this size and scope will have a devastating effect on the media marketplace. It will result in less competition, higher consumer costs and fewer content choices. It also will give one company unprecedented control over innovative new media that offer news, information, entertainment and cultural programming through emerging technologies.” Read the full letter.
Momentum is building against this deal, but we need citizens to keep speaking out against the merger. Add your voice.
