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!
Want to put Comcast in its place? Channel that anger you feel every month when you pay your cable bill? Now you can.
Each year, Consumerist.com runs a competition to determine the “Worst Company in America.” Not surprisingly, Comcast made it to the final round, defeating Cash4Gold in the semi-finals.
We think Comcast deserves the title of “Worst Company,” don’t you? If so, head on over to the Consumerist and cast your vote. The voting starts today and runs through the weekend. The winner will be announced Monday.
Comcast has a long history of terrible service, price-gouging its customers, cheating its competitors, and secretly interfering with users’ Internet traffic. Now it wants to take over NBC Universal — one of the nation’s largest TV and movie studios — a move that would give it control over even more of what we see and how we see it, on TV and online.
This is a great opportunity to send a message to Comcast that we’re overwhelmingly disgusted by its behavior. Comcast has come close to “winning” in past years, so let’s make sure it’s voted the worst in 2010.
This is a guest blog post by Brandy Doyle of the Prometheus Radio Project. She was on the ground in Florida in the days leading up to the FCC hearing and filed this report after the event. Be sure to check out all the work Prometheus is doing to help connect communities to people-powered local radio.
A little-publicized FCC workshop on Tuesday drew a large crowd that spoke loudly and unanimously against cross-ownership, with audience members lining up to speak for more than two hours of lively public comment.
The workshop signals that the FCC may try to lift its longtime ban on cross-ownership, which prevents a single company from owning the major newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market. Because Media General owns both the Tampa Tribune and WFLA in an arrangement that predates the 1975 ban, the FCC came to Tampa to evaluate the impact of existing cross-ownership in this area.
Bernie Lunzer of the Newspaper Guild said the FCC should encourage experimentation and consider new ways to support news, but that “diversity of delivery does not create diversity of content.”
“But if all the FCC does is lift the cross-ownership ban entirely, it will have done nothing to preserve or promote quality information. In fact, it will speed up the demise of journalism while preserving a cash flow for some,” said Lunzer, whose organization represents more than 28,000 media workers, including 15,000 journalists.
The most powerful testimonies came from Tampa residents, however, including Rob Lorei, the News and Public Affairs Director for WMNF Community Radio and a journalist in the area for more than 30 years.
To prepare his comments, Lorei spoke with some of the hundreds of laid off Tampa Tribune reporters and staff, people he called “victims not only of the recession but what Tribune employees tell me is the relentless demand by Media General headquarters in Richmond to return a 20-25% profit.”
Although Media General’s John Schueler denied this, he refused to estimate Media General’s profit returns.
“The convergence model here in Tampa is not a model on which you’ll see more original or investigative reporting,” said Lorei. “It’s a model where the owners of the operations will be able to extract more value, downsize staff, and keep up the appearance of being the community’s watchdog.”
Arlene Sweeting, general manager of low power station WSLR in Sarasota, asked the panelists what their media outlets had done to publicize the FCC workshop. No daily print newspapers or television stations had announced the event, and most of those in attendance learned about it through the outreach efforts of the Prometheus Radio Project and on community radio.
“Low power stations, community radio stations, and other non-profit media outlets do provide critical information to local communities, but it’s not enough,” said Sweeting. “We need ownership rules that ensure diversity in the big media outlets as well.”
Oscar Otzoy of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers described the role of low power station Radio Conciencia in uncovering and prosecuting modern day slavery in Florida’s fields, and argued that communities need more voices in the media, not fewer.
“As an organization and as a low power radio station, we are opposed to media consolidation,” said Otzoy. “We believe that by diversifying media and making it available to more people rather than consolidating it, we would be able to include more voices and to gather more perspectives on different issues.”
Ron Jenkins of Fort Myers said the media in his area does not address the needs of the black community, and that increased consolidation will worsen the problem.
“We don’t have an ability to speak to one another. The local radio stations are more concerned with profits than they are with the community at large…What I am asking from the FCC is that you step in. You come in, and you say, no, we’re going to regulate this, we’re going to make sure the communities will be represented.”
The workshop was part of the FCC’s 2010 review of its media ownership rules, which will likely see a new attempt at deregulating media cross-ownership. The FCC’s past attempts to dismantle ownership protections were stopped by the landmark Prometheus v. FCC as well as the thousands who spoke out against consolidation nationwide. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently lifted the stay on the FCC that resulted from that case, freeing the agency to modify its rules this year.
For weeks, Comcast and NBC Universal have been in discussion with several of the nation’s largest and most influential Latino civil rights groups on how their proposed merger would benefit the Latino community. Undoubtedly, Comcast and NBC will make promises that sound almost convincing as they urge Latino groups to support the merger. But no matter what they say, it’s clear that this deal is terrible for our community. We have already seen how consolidation has eroded the opportunities for Latinos to increase their presence in the media.
The Dangers of Greater Media Consolidation
This deal is problematic because it would give Comcast unprecedented power over all aspects of our media system, including the ability for the public to access their favorite programming on the Internet. But the deal is also problematic because Comcast simply can’t be trusted. It has a history of lying to customers and to federal regulators about its deceitful business practices.
Making matters worse, Comcast won a court case earlier this month that stripped the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of its current authority to regulate broadband. That ruling now jeopardizes the commission’s ability to implement the National Broadband Plan. If left unchallenged, the decision could prevent the commission from adopting rules to erase the digital divide or protect consumers from online discrimination. Comcast, as well as other big cable and phone companies like Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon, can now legally block the public’s access to any website, and there’s nothing the FCC can do about it. Its hands are currently tied. (More on this in a moment)
The proposed Comcast-NBC union is perhaps the most consequential media merger in our nation’s history. Comcast is already the nation’s largest cable company with franchises in 39 states as well as the District of Columbia. And the company is the largest residential broadband provider in the country, counting nearly 1 out of every 4 households as a subscriber.
If the merger is approved, Comcast would own the NBC and Telemundo networks, 26 local TV stations, nearly 20 cable channels, and major movie studios. Media consolidation is a primary reason for the record number of journalists being laid off, including a disproportionate number of journalists of color.
“A merger of Comcast and NBC should cause real fear,” explained O. Ricardo Pimentel, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, in announcing his group’s opposition to the merger last week. “When an entity that provides major programming joins with the folks who control the pipes through which this content flows, this concentrates too much control in too few hands. Media consolidation has already resulted in too much of this. Let’s not allow more of the same.”
Today, Latinos own just 1 percent of our nation’s full-power TV stations. But the situation is worse on cable. There are few commercial cable networks owned by Latinos that are carried by cable operators. And you’ll be hard pressed to find Latino-themed programming on NBC or on cable networks owned by Comcast. Meanwhile, NBC News has few Latino staffers and a history of marginalizing our community in its news coverage.
When NBC bought Telemundo in 2001, it promised to improve local news coverage. Instead, it cut the local newscasts of Telemundo stations in several cities with large Latino populations like San Antonio, San Jose and Phoenix. And Comcast has made no promises to change that or to improve news coverage at Telemundo stations.
Extending the FCC Review Process
The consequences of the deal are so far-reaching that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who recently grilled both Comcast and NBC for their lack of diversity at a congressional hearing, introduced a bill last week to force the FCC to give the public more time to comment on the potential impact of this deal. In just two days, more than 56 House members co-sponsored the legislation, including Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill..), Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.), Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico).
Last week, under pressure from Congress, the FCC abruptly suspended the public comment period on the merger, citing Comcast’s failure to submit two economic studies that address the public benefits of the merger and the impact it will have on the online video market. Pretty important stuff. Whatever the reason for the delay, it gives us important time to evaluate what this merger would mean for Latino communities.
At the very least, Latino leaders should press “pause” on any further negotiations with Comcast until they have had time to review the findings of the economic studies and determine whether this deal would truly benefit or harm the Latino community. And they should also call on the FCC to hold public hearings throughout the country to give our community a chance to weigh in.
Comcast Has Trouble Telling the Truth
Comcast has developed close relationships and provided financial support for many local and national organizations of color. The company sits on the corporate advisory board of the National Council of La Raza, along with AT&T and Verizon, and was the title sponsor of that organization’s 2005 convention.
Several local groups representing people of color, like the Tacoma Urban League and Centro de la Familia de Utah, have come down in favor of the merger because of the support they have received from Comcast. The Urban League chapter in Memphis even went as far as stating that Comcast shares its mission to seek the “dissolution of social and economic barriers in our communities.”
Comcast should be applauded for supporting organizations of color. But the company’s sponsorship of important programs shouldn’t be the primary reason to back this massive merger. If the deal is approved, Comcast would have greater control over how our community is covered and portrayed by the news media and entertainment programs.
But Latino leaders should look at the company’s past business practices in determining whether Comcast could be trusted to serve the needs of our community. I urge them to look at the company’s deceitful business practices and corporate ambitions that have placed the future of an open Internet in jeopardy and have crippled government efforts to close the digital divide.
In 2007, Comcast was caught blocking its customers from using a popular Web application known as BitTorrent to legally exchange large files and videos. This is an application used by entrepreneurs and big businesses, from independent filmmakers to big movie studios, as a faster way to move large files.
But this kind of online activity competes against the cable and online services offered by Comcast. And it’s no secret that Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have spent millions lobbying the government to win the legal authority to discriminate online so they can favor their own websites while slowing down sites owned by competitors.
Comcast’s blocking practices were discovered by an engineer who was trying to share his favorite Tin Pan Alley music with other enthusiasts. The Associated Press investigated and found Comcast had blocked the news agency from uploading or downloading a version of the King James Bible.
At first, Comcast denied any wrongdoing. And when the FCC held a public hearing about the company’s blocking practices at Harvard University, Comcast hired scores of people to fill the seats in the open meeting to crowd out public participation.
Eventually, the FCC forced Comcast to stop its blocking and admit that it had been blocking customers for more than two years. During that time it’s possible that Comcast intentionally interfered with the online experience of hundreds, if not thousands, of customers. It’s possible that Comcast blocked the use of the popular online application thousands, if not, millions of times. And it’s likely that many customers who were blocked were Latino small business owners and content creators.
Comcast got off with a slap on the wrist, avoiding any fines. But the company sued anyway, arguing the FCC didn’t have the legal authority to enforce its policy statement. A federal court ruled in Comcast’s favor earlier this month.
The ruling strips the FCC of its current authority to protect consumers from discrimination online; right now, it prevents the commission from implementing important parts of its National Broadband Plan, which was praised by many civil rights groups as an important first step toward finally ending the digital divide.
Our Community Should Be Heard
Companies always make promises that consolidation will benefit the public. Too often, these companies pay attention to our community when they need our help to advance their business or legislative agenda. But our community should be wary of unenforceable promises made by companies, particularly when one of those companies is Comcast.
I hope Latino leaders are considering the impact of this deal on the ability of Latinos to own broadcast stations and cable networks. I hope they will consider how the merger will affect cable rates, news coverage of our community, the hiring of more Latino journalists, and the future of the free and open Internet where anybody with a good idea or an innovative business has a chance to find an audience.
And I hope Latino leaders will closely scrutinize Comcast’s claims and call on the FCC to give our community a chance to be heard at public hearings throughout the country, because there’s still a lot to talk about.
This is a guest blog post by Brandy Doyle of the Prometheus Radio Project. She is on the ground in Tampa, Florida, for today’s FCC workshop on media ownership.
Do you think bigger media companies, further deregulation, and fewer independent local voices will solve the crisis in media? Despite all the evidence that consolidation hurts local media, the FCC still isn’t sure.
As part of its 2010 review of the media ownership rules, the FCC is holding a public workshop in Tampa, Florida on April 20, 2010 to consider its longtime ban on cross-ownership. Ending the ban (as the FCC tried to do in 2003 and 2007) would allow a single company to own the newspaper and the television or radio station in the same market.
Media activists may remember past rounds of FCC media ownership hearings that brought thousands of people out nationwide to protest media consolidation. The 2010 events have been…different.
These events are wonky workshops rather than noisy hearings, populated by industry insiders instead of big crowds, allowing broadcasters and CEOs to quietly make their case without much attention. Only three of the six workshops are happening outside DC (in Tampa, South Carolina, and an upcoming event in Stanford).
That’s not all that has changed. Up until a few weeks ago, the FCC wasn’t even allowed to end its cross-ownership ban. But on March 23, 2010, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to media justice, lifting a stay against the FCC that had stopped the FCC from dismantling its own rules. That stay was the result of the landmark Prometheus v. the FCC case, which blocked deregulation that would have dramatically homogenized media ownership.
Now that the stay has been lifted, the FCC’s 2007 rules are temporarily in effect, which means that cross-ownership is permitted in the top 20 markets, and elsewhere with a waiver process. The FCC can still ditch the 2007 plans when they write the rules this year, especially since there’s a new Chairman who may be willing to change course.
But the FCC’s return to Tampa signals a serious look at revoking the cross-ownership ban. In a unique situation that predates the 1975 ban, Media General owns both the Tampa Tribune and WFLA News Channel 8 in Tampa. And even Democratic Commissioners have sent mixed signals on cross-ownership recently. The argument is that fewer rules will save newspapers, but cross-ownership hasn’t kept the Tampa Tribune from shedding reporters and shrinking news coverage.
As broadcasters and media owners will tell you, media ownership has changed since 2007. They’ve picked up heavy debts during the consolidation frenzy of fatter years, and now they want bailouts in the form of rule changes (allowing yet more consolidation, just in case times improve).
Big broadcasters claim that the Internet means that we don’t need to worry about local news coverage anymore. But it’s not true that the rules are no longer relevant in a digital age; the rules still matter. What’s different is that just as media companies must learn to innovate, those who care about a democratic media must learn to fight on multiple fronts. From expanding broadband access to saving Net Neutrality to stopping the Comcast/NBC merger, activists and advocates are busy anticipating the challenges of media’s future.
Unfortunately, the FCC’s review of its rules on legacy media (newspapers, television, and radio) could get lost in the shuffle–even though these less-sexy technologies are still how most Americans get their news.
So it’s not surprising if you haven’t heard much about media ownership lately. But despite the under-the-radar events and the increasingly complex media landscape, it’s not hard to get caught up: Consolidation is still the problem. Independent media is still the solution.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ board of directors voted to oppose the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal last month, citing the harm media consolidation has historically caused to Latino journalists and the Latino community.
“We have seen the devastating impact media consolidation has had on newsrooms and our members,” said Iván Román, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “Companies like Comcast and NBC may try to sell us on why consolidation will benefit our community. But we know better. It never happens once the deal is done. Instead, Latino journalists are laid off and our community continues to be marginalized in news coverage.”
As NAHJ noted, media consolidation has been a major factor in why the media industry has lost more than 46,000 jobs in recent years, which includes a disproportionate number of journalists of color.
Consolidation has also made it more difficult for people of color to own broadcast stations. Instead, big corporate media companies have established greater control over everything we watch, read and hear. Worse yet, these companies have historically failed to serve the needs of the Latino community.
With this in mind, the proposed merger between Comcast and NBC Universal is simply appalling since it’s sure to further erode Latino representation in the media.
The deal would give Comcast unprecedented control over the various ways the public can access media. If approved, Comcast would own the NBC and Telemundo networks, 26 local TV stations, 11 cable channels and a movie studio. Comcast is also is the largest cable company in the country, counting nearly one out of every four households as a subscriber. It’s also the nation’s largest broadband provider.
Both Comcast and NBC have a poor history of employing Latinos and airing Latino programming. Comcast also has a terrible record of carrying Latino-owned cable networks on its cable system. While Comcast has made promises to increase the amount of news on NBC stations, it has made no such proposal when it comes to Telemundo.
“We remember the promises made by NBC in 2001 to invest in local Telemundo stations when it bought the network,” said Román. “But following the merger, NBC gutted the local news operations of Telemundo stations in major cities throughout the country. We urge our fellow journalism organizations and Latino leaders to join us in opposing this merger.”
To make matters worst, Comcast won a federal court decision last week that stripped the Federal Communications Commission of its authority to regulate the broadband industry, including taking action to close the digital divide or preventing broadband providers from discriminating online by blocking access to Web sites owned by its competitors.
If the merger is approved, Comcast will become the most dominant media company in the country. And yet, the FCC has failed to provide the public with enough time to weigh in on the merger, prompting Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) to introduce legislation forcing the commission to extend the public comment period.
Given the track record of Comcast and NBC, how could this merger possibly be good for Latinos? I posed this question in a column I co-wrote with Felix Sanchez, chairman of the Hispanic Foundation of the Arts, to Latino groups prior to a meeting they had with Comcast and NBC. The groups are still in dialogue about the merits of the deal.
I can only hope that Latino leaders will oppose the merger for the same reasons they opposed previous mergers, such as NBC’s acquisition of Telemundo. And I hope the groups at the bargaining table will talk with NAHJ about the impact of the merger on its members who work for these companies.
The Justice Department is currently reviewing the merger. If you want to make your voice heard, the time is now. Tell Your Congressional representative “No” to the Comcast-NBC deal.
Today, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) raised important questions about Comcast’s proposed takeover of NBC at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder.
Sen. Franken has been one of the strongest critics of the Comcast/NBC merger, and today he used his entire time with the attorney general to ask for specifics on how the Department of Justice was examining the proposed deal. Holder replied that he couldn’t give details about an ongoing investigation.
But then Sen. Franken made an appeal we can all understand – to our bank accounts. Franken noted his concern that the merger could mean higher prices for consumers across the nation – whether they subscribe to Comcast or not. This got Holder’s attention.
Watch the video:
Although this exchange marked a light moment in the hearing, this merger is no joke, and Holder promised that the DOJ would conduct a “thorough investigation.” This comes on the heels of a strong statement by Christine Varney, who heads the DOJ’s antitrust division. At an earlier hearing, Varney promised that there was no such thing as a “rubber stamp” at the agency.
There are two agencies that could stop Comcast’s takeover of NBC: the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. The DOJ evaluates the merger under the country’s antitrust laws. The FCC evaluates the merger under a public interest standard. Yet tight deadlines at the agency could keep many people from making their voice heard.
On Wednesday, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) introduced a bill that would allow for more time for public input on the proposed Comcast-NBC merger by extending the public comment period by 45 additional days.
She said in a statement:
The FCC must allow the public more time to present information, make arguments and raise questions about the takeover by Comcast — the nation’s biggest cable and broadband Internet company — of NBC Universal, which owns broadcast and cable networks, TV stations and programs, and movie studios. A merger of this magnitude would have an enormous impact on virtually every American, and I want to make sure individuals and public interest groups have a chance to be heard.
Comcast and NBC have an army of lobbyists blanketing Washington, D.C. and visiting lawmakers at the FCC and Congress. When it comes time to submit formal arguments to the FCC, Comcast and NBC have a team of lawyers doing research and developing their case for why this merger is a good idea. The Washington Post noted, “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.”
This is what we’re up against, and the FCC needs to make sure the public’s voices are not drowned out in this debate.
Free Press’s Joe Torres cheered Rep. Waters:
“This is one of the most important media transactions in history. The public has continually rejected media consolidation because it reduces the quality of the news and programming they receive. If Comcast is allowed to consolidate with NBC, it would give the cable giant greater control over our nation’s media system and likely lead to fewer content choices and higher cable prices. We support Rep. Waters and echo her call for the FCC to give the public enough time to comment on this deal.”
This bill sends a message. But it shouldn’t take legislation to get the FCC to do the right thing and give people time to weigh in.
We commend Rep. Waters for standing with the public. And we’ll keep pushing the FCC to do the same. But if you want to weigh in, you don’t need to wait for the FCC to come to your town. Help us fight back against Comcast’s lobbying machine by building a public record of protest in the official FCC docket.
A week before I graduated from college in 2002, my adviser called me into his office for a “welcome to the real world” chat.
“I know you want to be a writer, but I want to give you a dose of reality first,” he said. He pulled open a drawer jammed with rejection letters. “I don’t want to discourage you, but this industry is tough. Don’t take rejection personally—just keep writing.”
And so I have. But what happens when the media industry isn’t rejecting my work, it’s rejecting my gender? The fact of the matter is that women still don’t start on an equal playing field in the media.
Sure, we’ve made great strides—we’ve got Rachel Maddow and Katie Couric and Oprah. But our work for gender equality in the media is far from over. It’s as important as ever to tie the media reform movement to the advancement of women.
Where are the women?
In early April, National Public Radio’s ombudswoman, Alicia Shepard, released the results of her own gender survey in a blog post titled, “Where are the women?” She found that although the radio network is an industry leader when it comes to female hosts and correspondents, it doesn’t have the same record for female commentators and news sources. On NPR’s 104 shows between April 13, 2009 and Jan. 9, 2010, just 26 percent of the sources were women.
To be clear, NPR isn’t the only news organization with shameful stats. A recent report from the Global Media Monitoring Project found that worldwide, women make up only 24 percent of the people “interviewed, heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news.” And an article in Newsweek in March headlined “Are We There Yet?” outlines the longstanding and troubling gender bias in the industry, where “female bylines at major magazines are still outnumbered by seven to one.”
In her blog post, Shepard said NPR has plans to improve, but also rationalized the network’s behavior:
Admittedly, the relative lack of female voices reflects the broader world. The fact remains that even in the fifth decade after the feminist revolution; men are still largely in charge in government at all levels, in corporations and nearly all other aspects of society. That means, by default, there are going to be more male than female news sources.
This oft-repeated justification begs the chicken-and-the-egg question: Are female voices less prominent in the media because they hold fewer positions of power and authority, or are women holding less positions of power and leadership because they’re not given an equal platform in the media? Today, just like decades ago, women have to overcome negative and sexualized images in the media to obtain high-ranking political positions.
It’s still a man’s world
It is also rare to see women at the helm of media institutions. A 2007 study by Free Press, the organization I work for, found that while women comprised 51 percent of the U.S. population, they owned less than 6 percent of television stations and 8 percent of all full-power commercial broadcast radio stations. Again, we’re back to the chicken or the egg.
These alarming statistics mean that mostly men are deciding how to represent and portray a majority of our population in the media. Their choices often end up degrading, stereotyping or ignoring women. Even throwaway headlines like CNN’s “Women Blamed in Moscow Suicide Blasts” are damaging to women, and point to both a strange fascination with and objectification of the gender in the media. As a writer on the blog Femonomics wrote, “To see how backwards this headline is, imagine the consummately uninformative “Men blamed for 9/11.”
I’m not saying that CNN’s newsroom editors maniacally set out to hurt women with that headline, or that it was particularly egregious. In fact, the editors probably didn’t give it a second thought—and that’s where the problem lies. Gender bias is so rooted in our culture, and so subtle, that we can barely recognize it. And if we can’t recognize it, we can’t condemn it.
High stakes for gender equality
Even as women struggle now to break into the media industry as journalists and commentators, or to find media they can relate to as female consumers, the situation could get worse.
This year, we’re watching one of the biggest media mergers in history, as Comcast prepares to takeover NBC. Comcast has already sheepishly confessed to having only one woman on its board of directors—that’s just one woman helping to direct one of the most massive media empires in the country.
And because of a recent federal court ruling in favor of, again, Comcast, the future of the Internet as we’ve known it—a force that has leveled the playing field for women and allowed us to be our own voice and establish healthy images—is also in jeopardy.
So the stakes are now even higher: Women must get involved and fight for a better media system. Taking the media into our hands means claiming our power as women, and taking ownership over our viewpoints. And for you men reading this: Joining this movement means you won’t stand aside while the women in your lives are routinely maligned by the media.
After all, a more consolidated media system and a corporate-controlled Internet will only serve to deepen the entrenched sexism and gender bias that is so damaging to women and our collective consciousness.
In the last few years, the Federal Communications Commission has held local public hearings on media ownership, localism, broadband expansion, Net Neutrality, and more. Now, we are facing one of the largest media mergers our country has ever seen; will the FCC hit the road to hear local people’s concerns about it?
This week, we sent a letter to the FCC asking them to do just that.
As part of Comcast’s takeover of NBC, the cable giant hopes to get its hands on a number of valuable NBC and Telemundo broadcast stations in local communities. But those airwaves belong to the public, so Comcast has to ask the FCC for permission to transfer the broadcasting license from one company to the other.
Eleven of these local stations are located in communities where Comcast is already the dominant cable and residential Internet provider. If Comcast gets its way, it’ll control the news and entertainment those communities can watch, and how they can watch it – on cable, online and over the airwaves. That’s a media monopoly none of us can afford.
I have been talking with local people in these local communities across the country, and they are deeply concerned about Comcast’s big media power grab. We are calling on the FCC to meet face-to-face with the public in these communities where the merged company could dominate the local broadcasting and cable markets.
The question now is will the FCC listen to the public or push them to the side? Initial feedback to the letter doesn’t look promising. Industry publication Multichannel reports that, “The groups, comprising Free Press, Media Access Project, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America, essentially take plans for such hearings for granted, though the commission has almost never scheduled such hearings according to an FCC spokesman, who points out that it usually collects public input on mergers through written comments and reply comments.”
Is that true? Are public hearings really too much to ask? It wasn’t in the past. The FCC has scheduled and held field hearings in the past before major transactions, including the mergers between AOL/Time Warner, AT&T/Media One, MCI WorldCom/Sprint, SBC/Ameritech, Bell Atlantic/GTE and AT&T/Tele-Communications Inc. This is in addition to the nearly twenty other public hearings and workshops they have held since 2007. Indeed, this FCC has repeatedly expressed its commitment to greater transparency and public outreach.
We know Comcast doesn’t like public hearings. When the FCC was investigating Comcast’s Internet blocking in 2007, Comcast paid people to fill the seats of a Boston hearing to keep the public out. They event instructed people when to clap and cheer. They fessed up to the meddling afterwards, but the damage was done. Comcast clearly wants to stifle the public’s voice.
But Comcast isn’t stopping us from demanding that the FCC hear from the public about one of the biggest media mergers in history. Thousands of Americans have told the FCC online that they have concerns about this merger, but there is nothing like hearing from people face-to-face, on their own turf, and seeing the impact of media consolidation first hand.
Fans of the TV show “30 Rock” on NBC have watched in recent weeks as the show has taken on its network’s impending merger with Comcast in the form of a fictional company called “Kabletown.” This week, “30 Rock” upped the stakes, giving “Kabletown” its own Web site, www.kabletown.com.
The news section of the spoof site says, “Kabletown is thrilled to announce the recent acquisition of GE Sheinhardt NBC Universal. With this partnership comes the promise of high quality entertainment for our audiences, continued superior service for our customers, and the possibility of meeting the girl from ‘Chuck’ for our executives.”
The site exhibits classic “30 Rock” satire, but what is haunting is how close the biting humor comes to the real world. For example, in a nod to the anti-competitive nature of this deal, the site proclaims, “We at Kabletown know that the landscape of television is changing. Our goal is to evolve and adapt along with it, offering new ways for our customers to get their content. This acquisition will give Kabletown customers access to NBC content, plus content from the network’s cable properties.” Obviously, lacking here is content from any competitors.
In the programming section of the site, the “30 Rock” team also calls attention to the fact that Comcast is the country’s largest on-demand deliverer of pornography.
The sad thing is, between their discussion of the fake-but-real merger on the show, and this new Web site, “30 Rock” – a sitcom may actually be covering the merger more than any other show on NBC or MSNBC. As the network’s newscasts seem to look the other way, I guess we’ll have to rely on Tina Fey to give us the dirt on one of the largest media mergers ever.
