New Economic Study Reveals Comcast-NBCU's Control Of 'Must Have' Content Will Cost An Extra $2.4 B

[onehandle]

Source: American Cable Association

In a new economic study released today, the American Cable Association found that consumers over the next nine years will pay at least $2.4 billion more for pay-television service as a result of unrestrained pricing power that will flow from the combination of Comcast Corp. and NBC Universal, an unprecedented media transaction awaiting regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice.

"It is clear that the Comcast-NBCU deal will send monthly cable bills higher by billions of dollars over the next decade, underscoring ACA's view that regulators must protect consumers and competition from a transaction whose benefits are vastly outweighed by its harms. Without meaningful and cost effective conditions on the Comcast-NBCU transaction, regulators also run the risk of crippling effective competition in the pay-TV distribution market," ACA President and CEO Matthew M. Polka said.

ACA's study was conducted by Dr. William Rogerson, professor of economics at Northwestern University, who served as the FCC's Chief Economist for the 1998-99 academic year. Rogerson's study concluded that the transaction will allow Comcast-NBCU to raise programming fees way above levels the two would be able to command as separate and independent companies, and that these fee increases will largely be passed through to subscribers in the form of higher subscription prices. According to Rogerson, the quantifiable consumer harm of the transaction ($2.566 billion) is more than 10 times greater than the quantifiable consumer benefit ($204 million) claimed by Comcast-NBCU.

In his detailed analysis, Rogerson found that the consumer harm will manifest itself in two ways. The first is vertical harm arising from the combination of NBCU national cable programming networks and NBC owned-and-operated broadcast television stations with Comcast’s cable distribution assets. This alignment will permit Comcast-NBCU to raise the fees it charges for NBCU programming to Comcast’s cable and satellite rivals, including nearly 40 ACA member companies, such as RCN, WOW!, Wave Broadband, Broadstripe, and SureWest.


Read more: http://www.americancable.org/node/2502

[Ian David]

1. Say No to the Comcast-NBC Merger!

Say No to the Comcast-NBC Merger!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x34408

[glinda]

2. Let alone the shutting off of information that would provide opportunity for truths.

[tomm2thumbs]

3. omg, how will anyone live without their cable?

dump cable, while you can still afford to

[Occulus]

5. People will start getting everything online. In fact, they already are.

That's what killing off net neutrality was all about.

[Heywood J]

4. Wait, what?

regulators must protect consumers and competition from a transaction whose benefits are vastly outweighed by its harms.

the quantifiable consumer harm of the transaction ($2.566 billion) is more than 10 times greater than the quantifiable consumer benefit

What we have here is a failure to communicate.