The marriage of Comcast and NBC is bad news for consumers. But Washington and Wall Street have already bought into the idea that it's a done deal. That's why Americans need to speak out now and stop the mega-merger!
It was another bruising day for Comcast and NBC on Capitol Hill. The House Judiciary Committee seemed to be taking a page from Sen. Al Franken – asking tough questions, calling CEOs Roberts and Zucker out on their meager talking points, and articulating serious concerns about Comcast’s proposed takeover of NBC-Universal.
As noted in the headlines above, the issue of jobs and diversity were lightning rods at this hearing, and some of the questioning left Roberts and Zucker stammering.
One highlight included Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) running down the list of board members for each company and noting the extraordinarily low number of women and people of color in the companies’ leadership. Neither company has any Latinos on its board, even though NBC owns one of the nation’s largest Spanish-language TV networks, Telemundo. “A board can tell us a lot about an organization,” Rep Waters said in response to the CEOs’ claims of prioritizing diversity.
Another highlight came when Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D- Ill.) reminded NBC’s Zucker about the labor promises NBC made and then broke when it acquired Telemundo. Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), also frustrated about the companies’ past labor practices, made both Roberts and Zucker publicly commit to schedule a meeting in the near future with Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America.
For full coverage of the event, read the articles above or watch the nearly eight-hour hearing archived on C-Span.
Just days after an important media ownership hearing in South Carolina, one of the nation’s biggest media conglomerates illustrates why Big Media mean fewer diverse voices and less local news.
On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission held a workshop in South Carolina as part of its regular review of media ownership laws. It was just two years ago that the FCC flew in the face of Congress and 99 percent of the American public and tried to relax these same ownership laws and permit more media cross-ownership.
The panels focused on broadcast radio and TV. In the past, many local TV and radio stations ignored these hearings. It has always been difficult to get the media to cover the policy debates that shape their industry.
So we were surprised and pleased to see two reports about the FCC event from local TV stations in South Carolina. However, when we went to the WSPA (CBS Channel 7) and WJBF (ABC channel 6) Web sites, it turns out that they posted the exact same story.
A case of plagiarism? Nope – actually something a little more disconcerting. The two supposedly different and competing news stations are engaged in “news sharing,” giving the public the same news and perspective on both channels.
WSPA and WJBF are owned by Media General, one of the nation’s largest media conglomerates. Usually ABC and CBS stations would compete in an effort to produce the best news and attract local viewers, but instead these two stations share newsroom operations and just recycle stories across their sites. If the FCC had any questions about the impact of media consolidation, they should just look no further than at how these South Carolina stations reported on the FCC hearing held in the same state.
It’s interesting to note that the author of the duplicate news story doesn’t seem to be employed by either newsroom (where are the reporters?), but by an advertising company owned by Media General. Joseph Kasko’s e-mail address is listed as jkasko@florencenews.com, but Florencenews.com redirects to an advertising agency for local newspapers.
Digging a little deeper gives us an even more troubling picture of the ways that media consolidation has gutted the media system in South Carolina and surrounding states. In addition to WSPA, WJBF lists four other partner newsrooms that they collaborate with: WSAV, SCNow, WRBL, WCBD. When they are not recycling news stories among these partner stations, WJBF is simply posting links to Associated Press stories – an accepted industry practice gone awry at this station; of the eight “top news stories” on WJBF, every single one was from the AP.
This is media consolidation at work. As more and more of our vital public airwaves are put in the hands of fewer and fewer companies, we can expect to see a lot more of this news sharing between stations, leaving us with less local news, more layoffs, and the same story on every channel.
Every day it becomes more and more clear that Comcast and NBC are willing to do whatever it takes to shove their merger down the throats of Congress and the American people. Comcast has a long history of saying one thing and doing another, a trend that has continued in recent weeks. This doesn’t bode well for the future of American media.
Every time Comcast makes a promise, it seems to have its fingers crossed behind its back.
For example, earlier this month, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts promised Sens. Al Franken and Arlen Specter that his company would abide by critical pro-competition “program access” rules established by the Federal Communications Commission. However, at the same time Comcast was pouring money into a court case trying to overturn those same rules.
We can’t let this merger skate through on the back of meaningless promises like this.
Comcast still hasn’t withdrawn from this lawsuit – raising real questions about whether the company can be trusted to follow through on its commitment to pro-competition rules. Now that the lights and cameras are off, no one is holding them to it.
“What Comcast conveniently failed to tell regulators is that it has no intention of letting the FCC rules remain in place,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and CEO of Media Access Project. “If Comcast is successful in eliminating the ban, the FCC’s current program access rules would no longer exist, and Comcast’s commitment will have vanished before the merger review is even concluded.”
Comcast also promised that this merger would have little or no impact on jobs, and that the company would honor all union contracts in place at NBC after the merger. But Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, has real doubts about these promises. “What does it say about Comcast’s overall ‘public interest commitments’ when it so clearly is working to undercut public policy for program access?”
Indeed, last December, when Comcast and NBC Universal announced their $30 billion merger, they also announced an assortment of “public interest” commitments that were nothing more than promises to do what is mandated by law. “Comcast is either promising to do what it was already planning to do or simply what it is required to do by law,” says Corie Wright, policy counsel here at Free Press. “I don’t think Comcast can just tie a bow around the status quo and call it a public interest commitment.”
Consumer and industry groups are calling on Comcast prove they can be trusted by backing out of the lawsuit they are currently pursuing against the FCC. We sent the letter a week ago, and so far we haven’t seen any response. No surprise there.
Senator Al Franken stole the show at this week’s Senate hearing on Comcast’s proposed takeover of NBC-Universal. As a former employee of NBC and a long-time media insider, Franken unleashed a scathing critique of both Comcast and NBC, outlining their long history as corporate bad actors with a string of broken promises.
Franken drew on his years as a writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live,” arguing that previous actions by both companies give him “reason to be very concerned about this potential merger.” However, Franken did not just feel betrayed by past actions. At the hearing, he argued that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had misled him about the company’s commitment to public interest concessions. It turns out that Comcast promised Senator Franken that FCC rules would protect the public and prevent the company from discriminating against competing video distributors and programmers even while Comcast was trying to get those rules thrown out.
Witnesses at the hearing pointed out that, in addition to challenging the existence of rules, Comcast is the frequent subject of complaints from rival programmers and cable operators for violating the rules. The company has also been cited for lying to the FCC about blocking Internet users’ access to a competing a video application.
“You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust these promises,” Franken said in his remarks.
While Sen. Franken was the most vocal in his concerns about this merger, he was far from alone. Sen. Kohl, the chairman of the subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Feingold were also skeptical about the deal. There was a significant amount of concern about what this deal would mean for local affiliate stations, local sports coverage, small businesses and jobs.
Andy Schwartzman from the Media Access Project and Mark Cooper of Consumers Federation of America offered powerful arguments against the merger.
Schwartzman focused his criticism on the ways this merger would impact the nation at large. “Concentration of control in the mass media poses unique questions for policymakers and regulators,” Schwartzman argued. “Unlike any other line of business, media properties raise important questions which go to the very nature of democratic self-governance.”
He pointed to three threats this merger poses: It would increase Comcast’s power to squeeze out independent programmers with diverse editorial perspectives; give the merged company vastly increased power over content distribution markets; and, jeopardize development of a free and open Internet. Cooper, instead, honed in on the unique local issues raised by this deal. Comcast competes head to head with NBC for eyeballs and advertising revenue in at least 11 cities. These 11 markets account for nearly a quarter of U.S. TV households.
Cooper argued that the decreased competition in these cities will have a chilling effect, leading to a greater consolidation of voices and viewpoints.
“NBC and Comcast do not sell widgets,” Cooper reminded the Senators. “They sell news and information and access to the primary platforms Americans use to receive this news and information. Control over production and distribution of information has critical implications for society and democracy.” Franken echoed this statement, “It matters who owns our media. When one company owns the production and distribution of content it gives reason for concern.”
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts stammered through the afternoon, clearly caught off guard by the hard questioning. Members of both the House and the Senate ended their hearings calling for further investigation, and future hearings with the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission.
One thing was clear at the end of the day: This deal is far from a sure thing.
As the House and Senate held hearings to investigate Comcast’s takeover of NBC yesterday, something else became illuminated for the public: This was not the first time these members of Congress had sat down with Comcast.
Members of Congress mentioned meeting after meeting they’ve already had with Comcast and NBC officials and lobbyists, and could have pointed to those in the audience, mostly former policymakers and Capitol Hill staff who now work for Comcast, who have been selling this merger throughout Washington.
Indeed, the night before these hearings, a flurry of articles revealed the dramatic investment Comcast and NBC have made in trying to sway policy makers to support this deal.
Comcast and NBC Universal’s parent company have showered campaign contributions on members of two panels holding hearings Thursday on the cable giant’s proposed purchase of the television network. Comcast and General Electric have already spent $474,000 on contributions to members of the panels, about 70 percent of what they spent over the entire political cycle of 2008.
General Electric Chairman Jeffery Immelt sent Sen. Orrin Hatch a $2,000 campaign contribution the same day his company announced a deal giving Comcast controlling interest in NBC Universal. It was the first time Immelt has donated to the Utah senator, and yet the contribution capped a fundraising barrage during the previous month where top GE vice presidents and the company’s political action committee funneled a total of $23,000 to Hatch’s campaign account. Hatch is expected to play a key role in the congressional review of the controversial merger.
The tale of Comcast’s remarkable rise in Washington tracks the story of how the cable giant built its business. In the same way that it aggressively grew its empire by acquiring one cable system at a time, the company has methodically added one lobbyist after another and steadily spread more money around the nation’s capital as its interests expanded beyond the television screen.
If this deal is in the public’s best interest, then why would Comcast and NBC need to spend this kind of money to grease the wheels in Washington? Comcast is hoping to use their big bank accounts to silence any protests about this merger. But across the country, in local communities, in Web forums, on Twitter and on Facebook, people are fed up with the media giant’s bad actions.
They may have the big bucks, but we have you. Help us raise just one day of Comcast CEO Brian Robert’s salary to fight back against this merger.
If you could ask Comcast CEO Brian Roberts one thing about their takeover of NBC, what would it be?
Are you worried about this deal raising your cable rates, giving you fewer video choices online, or setting off a wave of other mergers across the country? Would you ask about all the potential local jobs that will be lost, or Comcast’s plan to lock down online TV? Maybe you’re just afraid that Comcast will move 30 Rock to their headquarters in Philadelphia?
Now is your chance to find out.
On Thursday, Roberts is going to be in the hot seat in Washington, D.C. at a Congressional double header: hearings in both the House and Senate. Policymakers are taking a hard look at this merger, and they’ll be asking some tough questions.
We want some of those questions to come from you. Check out our new “Dear Comcast” Web site – www.DearComcast.com – where you can grill Brian Roberts yourself. We will forward your questions to key members on both committees and urge them to hold Comcast’s feat to the fire.
If this merger goes through, in some places Comcast will control your access to cable, to the Web and to your local NBC station. Even if you don’t have Comcast in your area, they could make your bills go up by charging more for NBC programming.
What does that mean for you? How’s that going to impact your ability to watch TV online with Hulu and Netflix? Who the heck does Brian Roberts think he is?
As they used to say in grade school – there is no such thing as a bad question!
Ask your question now, and stay tuned on Thursday to see if one of your questions is asked, and how Roberts answers it.
