{"id":224251,"date":"2016-02-13T01:17:01","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T01:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/action-alert-stop-mega-cable-merger-to-avoid-a-second-comcast\/"},"modified":"2016-02-13T01:17:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T01:17:01","slug":"action-alert-stop-mega-cable-merger-to-avoid-a-second-comcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/action-alert-stop-mega-cable-merger-to-avoid-a-second-comcast\/","title":{"rendered":"ACTION ALERT: Stop Mega-Cable Merger to Avoid a Second Comcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Time<\/a>Americans are divided in many ways, but there are some points of convergence\u2014one of which seems to be hatred of the cable company Comcast<\/strong>. Notoriously terrible<\/a> customer service, a pricing system described as “absurd<\/a>” and a stranglehold<\/a> on internet speeds garner the cable behemoth a remarkable amount<\/a> of dislike and distrust, which played a role in the quashing of its recent effort<\/a> to merge with perennial runner-up for worst company in America, Time Warner Cable<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

You’d think it would be bigger news, therefore, that Americans who hate Comcast<\/strong> largely for reasons related to its very bigness are now facing the possibility of, essentially, another Comcast<\/strong>. The harms from a possible merger between Time Warner<\/strong>, Charter Communications<\/strong> and Bright House Networks<\/strong> were detailed in a piece for BillMoyers.com<\/strong> (2\/4\/16<\/a>) by Michael Copps.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a><\/p>\n

Former FCC chair calls<\/a> the proposed TWC<\/strong>\/Charter<\/strong> merger an “affront to the public interest.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Not a stranger to the issue but the former chair of the FCC, Copps notes that this new mega-company would control about a third of the nation’s cable and cable-broadband markets; would also own programming, including regional sports networks; and would dominate some of the biggest media markets, like New York and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Worse, since the new company wouldn’t share any markets with Comcast<\/strong>, they’d have no incentive to compete, but every incentive to coordinate against joint competitors, including those offering independent and diverse voices.<\/p>\n

Least surprising, the deal would start the new company off with some $27 billion in debt, a time-honored incentive to raise prices and cut services\u2014and why not? Where else will people go?<\/p>\n

ACTION:<\/strong><\/p>\n

There’s still time to speak out against the TWC<\/strong>\/Charter<\/strong> merger. One place to file comments with the FCC is NoMoreMergers.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR and the host of CounterSpin<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans are divided in many ways, but there are some points of convergence\u2014one of which seems to be hatred of the cable company Comcast. Notoriously terrible customer service, a pricing system described as “absurd” and a stranglehold on internet speeds garner the cable behemoth a remarkable amount of dislike and distrust, which played a role […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-224251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}