Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
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A U.S. court struck down a rule limiting a cable company to no more than 30 percent of the subscription television market
"The commission has failed to demonstrate that allowing a cable operator to serve more than 30 percent of all cable subscribers would threaten to reduce either competition or diversity in programing," the court said.
IMO, 30% is too low for a non-critical service like TV. As far as broadband (which is closely related to TV service now), there is still DSL, satellite, etc. So I agree with this ruling. If a merger is proposed that gives a company unreal market-share, then it should be highly scrutinized and likely rejected depending on the circumstances.
And I support diversity of ownership.
You can't just look at how power is used at the moment, you have to look at how it could be abused.
If I passed a law allowing Comcast to have a bomb in your house they can explode whenever they like, I could say 'see, the bomb has been there a year, and you are unhurt'.
It's not the point.
These things are always going to have muddy elements to define what's the right approach, but the bottom line is that too much power in too few hands invites problems.
What if tomorrow the culture shifts from how it is now, and Comcast did decide to abuse its power you gave it so easily?
The way that Jon Stewart might mock Republicans no problem at the moment, but the way Phil Donahue had MSNBC's top-ratings show cancelled to censor his having any anti-war guests on - even after he complied with the demand to have two pro-war gueses for each anti-war - who's to say the new coporate parent of Comedy Central doesn't cancel Stewart the next time there's political incentive to - or that Comcast won't misbehave?
There's a reason for these laws requiring distribution of power that isn't always obvious when they're passed - remember how 'too big to fail' for banks wasn't that big a controversy, until the current financial crisis? Yet you are happy to say 'who cares' about preserving the diverscation in ownership of our essential media our democracy all too much counts on for informing people. It's already filled with crap because of the corporate concentration of ownership of the media companies, we don't need to make it worse.
Comast anecdote: when the government, doing what it's supposed to do for the public interest, held public meetings to hear people say what they wanted about Comcast, Comcast wnet out and paid homeless people to get in line and take up all the seats to prevent the public from having seats at the meeting. The government rescheduled the meeting with additional protections, but that's an idea how they'll behave.
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