FCC Approves AT&T Merger with MediaOne

Tei'ehm Teuw writes "From an article on CNN - The Federal Communications Commission Monday approved AT&T Corp.'s proposed $54 billion bid to buy cable television company MediaOne Group Inc. This will pave the road for servises like Roadrunner to be tenatively available in 30 percent of the US market. The FCC denied AT&T's position that the 30 percent ownership rule did not apply to its proposed merger with MediaOne and is forcing them to reduce the overall cable assets across the new empire. This is both good and bad, good because broadband access is more widespread, but bat because the monopoly of old seems to be making a comeback. " It seems that the FCC is requiring AT&T to give up MediaOne's stake in Time Warner, and/or 11.2 million other cable subscribers, so that they control under 30% of the cable market. However, I've seen a lot of these Stop AT&T billboards where I live.

Comments

big media (again)

[chitselb]

First of all, it's "services," not "servises." And "bat" should have been "bad." Editor!

Moving to the substance of the matter, here we see big media news coverage of Yet Another Big Media Merger. Does it occur to anyone besides me that:

1) CNN's coverage of a competitor's mega-merger might be um... somewhat biased?

2) Leaving the details of this one particular mega-deal aside, it's kind of strange that such an enormous concentration of media power has been placed into the hands of so few people in an alleged Democratic Republic?

In other words, would it really make a difference if we give all the control to a single corporation over all the media (cable TV, broadcast TV, radio, broadband, dialup, newspapers) vs. splitting it up into a cartel of a dozen or so companies? If an advertiser will eagerly pay millions of dollars for a single 30-second spot during the Super Bowl(tm), it could only be for one reason -- because it works. One of the reasons I avoid watching TV is that I believe the same holds true for the other 99.9996527778% of the year. This is taking place in an era where, in theory, just about *anyone* can garner a worldwide audience for their idea, if it is good enough, using readily available, affordable equipment. Why then are so few people (RIAA, MPAA, Disney/Go/ABC, MS/NBC/GE, etc...) in control of the intellectual marketplace?