Videos: Why We Oppose the Comcast Merger
Posted January 18th, 2011 by Megan Tady
The Federal Communications Commission is about to give its blessing to the biggest media merger in a decade. Approving the Comcast-NBC merger is a big mistake. Recently, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) warned that “we could end up with a few corporate giants in contol of the flow of information in America.”
Public interest groups, small broadcasters, independent content providers and small tech companies have been fighting this deal for a year. We caught up with a few of them at the Open Video Conference in New York City last October to hear why they oppose the merger.
Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Michael Weinberg worries about a single company owning lots of video content, TV channels, Internet pipes and a cable system.
Mehan Jayasuriya, director of outreach and new media for Public Knowledge, said that Internet service providers like Comcast and content creators like NBC have every incentive to crowd out user-generated video from the online video market.
BlipTV CTO Justin Day describes how the merger could spell trouble for online video companies.
And Lisette Voytko of DotTV muses about the future of online video and Hulu in a post-merger future.
