I'll admit I am a little obsessed with the insipid web of media consolidation, maybe to a fault. I am the annoying kind of media consumer who is vigilantly on the lookout for subtle product placement or manipulative messages. Watching TV with me is kind of like sitting next to the guy with the peanut allergy on an airplane.
(I'll let you ponder that one for a moment.)
Television, movies, newspapers, books, and the internet are our primary sources of information and entertainment. They are meant to serve the public interest and provide diverse voices, viewpoints and programming. When a few ginormous corporations control most of our sources of information, local, minority and independent owners are pushed out of the market.
Thus, the pending merger of Comcast and NBC Universal makes me very uncomfortable.
Let's take a quick look at who we are dealing with here. Comcast has 23.9 million cable customers and 15.3 million high-speed internet customers, making it both the largest cable company and the largest residential broadband provider.
Combined, these two huge companies make over $50 billion in annual revenue. This marriage would be the beginning of an unprecedented media consolidation with an inevitable domino effect. The other huge media and telecom companies will have to compete. Among Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and AT&T, these guys will strike up a couple more mega-deals to fill in the rest of the pie. Sorry independent content creators - always the bridesmaids, never the brides.
This pending merger is disconcerting, particularly at a time when the rules of traditional media are in such disarray. The future of the internet is being decided right now. It could go the way of a free and open medium, or fall into the hands of a few with tremendous market power.
I dread the day when we reflect back on the good times of Net Neutrality, when ISPs didn't speed up or slow down online content based on its source and who pays them the most. And thanks to Comcast, we got a taste of this predicament. In 2007, the AP confirmed that Comcast was blocking internet file sharing by posing as its users and sending messages to actual users that would tell them to stop communicating. Sneaky bastards.
So imagine you are surfing the net and want to watch CSI Kandahar, a CBS show, but the speed is as slow as dial-up circa 1998. A pop-up ad for Bravo's Real Housewives of Baghdad appears. You click and the program streams smoothly and at lightening speed.
I dread the day when we reflect back on the good times of Net Neutrality, when ISPs didn't speed up or slow down online content based on its source and who pays them the most. And thanks to Comcast, we got a taste of this predicament. In 2007, the AP confirmed that Comcast was blocking internet file sharing by posing as its users and sending messages to actual users that would tell them to stop communicating. Sneaky bastards.
So imagine you are surfing the net and want to watch CSI Kandahar, a CBS show, but the speed is as slow as dial-up circa 1998. A pop-up ad for Bravo's Real Housewives of Baghdad appears. You click and the program streams smoothly and at lightening speed.
The conflicts of interest go on. Subscription-based TV distributors like Direct TV pay content providers like NBCU for the right to carry their cable channels. If their fees go up, that burden will get passed on to the consumer. Bundled cable/internet/wireless bills will rise.
How is this not vertical integration? Why aren't antitrust violations being scrutinized?
Well, the reason is obvious. The media and telecommunications industries are second to drug companies in how much money they spend on federal lobbying.
But hey, maybe there is a silver lining to all of this. If you have internet or cable troubles, who's to say Steve Carell won't show up to fix the problem.
