It’s all about higher prices for consumers. The American Cable Association – smaller cable systems – has filed a statement with the FCC saying that after an authorized look at confidential Comcast documents they’re convinced that the horizontal and vertical harms of the Comcast/NBCU merger will be even greater than they’d thought.
The harms ACA have identified include higher prices for competing distributors wanting access to programming – and thus higher prices for consumers. “At its heart,” ACA says, “the proposed transaction is driven by the desire of the Applicants to increase the leverage (market power) of their programming assets, which they can then exercise to the detriment of [competing video distributors]..” and inevitably forcing consumer pricing higher.
ACA claims that the Comcast documents confirm that local NBC programming is “must have,” and so is MSNBC, Bravo, USA, CNBC, Oxygen.. If the transaction takes place, they assert, the Applicants’ market power will increase dramatically.
The redactions made necessary by Comcast’s requirements for confidentiality make this a curious filing – take a look.
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