FCC Flooded By Citizens Concerned About Comcast

Posted August 19th, 2010 by Josh Stearns

As of yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission had received 33,049 comments about the proposed merger of Comcast with NBC-Universal. Nearly 32,000 of those comments were from local citizens from around the country who oppose the merger. That means 94 percent of people weighing in at the FCC believe this merger is bad for competition, consumers and our communities.

But will the FCC listen to the public, or will it be swayed by Comcast’s lobbying machine?

Comcast’s hometown paper, The Philly Inquirer, estimates that Comcast has spent almost $90 million in the last six months to win approval of this terrible merger. Together, NBC and Comcast have hired nearly 100 former government officials to flood Washington with their money and talking points. And TechDailyDose points out that since 2008, 385 members of Congress (that’s three quarters of Congress) have received money from employees of Comcast or its political action committee.

A few weeks ago, Comcast’s army of lawyers and lobbyists submitted more than 600 pages of documents claiming to justify this deal – one of the biggest media mergers in a generation. However, those 600 pages were mostly full of generic talking points, flawed data and inconsistent statements. Today was the FCC deadline to respond to Comcast’s massive filing and Free Press – along with the Media Access Project, Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union – filed these comments.

The merger of the largest cable operator and one of the nation’s premier video content producers will fundamentally alter the structure of the video marketplace to the detriment of competition, innovation and diversity. Here are two examples:

Online Video Markets
This merger threatens the emerging market for online video by eliminating competition between Comcast’s and NBCU’s online video platforms. By virtue of their combined control over broadband access, cable platforms and a critical mass of content, Comcast/NBC will be uniquely situated to withhold content from emerging online video competitors like Netflix, Vuze and Boxee. As the nation’s largest broadband Internet service provider, Comcast can also control access
and the quality of its competitors’ services. The combined company will have both the incentive and the ability to influence the growth of online video to its own advantage, and to the detriment of competition and consumers.

Local Media Markets
The merger will hurt local media and create a near monopoly in local advertising by eliminating direct competition between Comcast’s cable operations and NBC’s local broadcast stations. Comcast has been making side deals with stakeholders, but all they really do is preserve the status quo, and do not affirmatively promote public interest goals. In fact, Comcast’s “promise” to improve local programming on NBC stations is dubious and unenforceable, and the company ignores making such a promise for Telemundo stations.

Buying Merger Support

The harms resulting from this merger run so wide and so deep that we are skeptical that they can be remedied. So far, most of Comcast’s support seems to have been bought, not earned. In their comments, Comcast made a big deal out of the generous “cash and in-kind contributions” they have made to various organizations. While we applaud corporate citizenship, giving donations to local nonprofits to entice them to back a bad deal will only hurt the public in the long run.

The FCC doesn’t stand for “Federal Cash-and-In-Kind-Contribution Commission,” and this type of financial support, while commendable, is irrelevant to this merger review. The FCC’s duty is to promote competition, diversity and localism – not fostering more charitable giving.

This fight is far from over and there is still time for you to weigh in. Make sure your lawmakers know that you oppose this deal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.