It's Time for Dems to "Put Up or Shut Up" on Media Consolidation (Huffpost)

[Armstead]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/mega-media-era-begins-gev_b_359386.html


Josh Silver
Excerpt:

On Monday night, French media giant Vivendi and NBC parent company General Electric agreed to terms that clear the way for US cable giant Comcast to take a controlling stake in NBC Universal. An announcement from Comcast is expected within days. The proposed merger would create a media behemoth, and clear the way for an unprecedented era of media consolidation across cable, the Internet and broadcast television.

Be afraid. Comcast is both the largest cable company and the largest residential broadband provider in the United States: a $34-billion business with 24 million subscribers, reaching nearly one out of every four homes in the country. NBCU owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Studios, 27 television stations, and a host of other properties.

President Obama has promised that his administration would finally begin enforcing antitrust laws to prevent unreasonable consolidation of market power. If ever a media deal posed such a threat, this is it. The merged Comcast would be to media what Goldman Sachs is to Wall Street: "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi once described the latter.

It should come as no surprise that Wall Street and Washington are saying this is already a done deal: The media and telecommunications industry is second only to drug companies in how much it spends lobbying Washington....

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[Vidar]

1. K&R.

[Firstzar]

2. Orwell would love this!