Six corporations own 90 percent of everything Americans watch. read or listen to. Now Comcast and NBC are trying to merge.
Mergers generally result in layoffs, less local programming., higher prices and a reduction of diversity programming. Now the same company can control internet access and speed. No good can come from this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ODV5U87yps here is Franken’s speech on the subject yesterday.
NBC already sucks - Comcast can only make it worse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/technology/07net.html It is not about that. Controlling the internet, books, newspapers and TV allows them to have great powers over what you watch, read ,see and listen to. It is a power they should not have.
I have honestly never understood this argument. Do you really believe six corporations own everything? Not only is that not true, but one of the biggest disseminators of information in 2010 is independantly owned. Can you guess what it is? It’s Facebook.
Facebook generates 44% of all “share button” links on the Internet. So regardless of who owns what, if people believe it, they’ll put it on Facebook for somebody else to read. (Facebook Drives 44 Percent Of Social Sharing On The Web | TechCrunch)
Information flow is what’s important, not where the information comes from, because it comes from everywhere.
What about the Kabletown acquisition?
The Cable companies have made no secret that they want to have different load rates . So sites that paid more or were owned by them would load up quickly, ones that were critical or that they disagreed with might have very slow loads. They own the facilities to create their own programming. What speed would that load at? There is a way for the system to be abused. Of course some of you believe corporations would never do anything untoward. Those people scare me.
Finland enshrines 'legal right' to broadband Other countries have seen the value of high speed internet. In America we see it as another way to make money for corporations. Rest assured if the internet gets controlled by corporations the massive innovation will suffer. Jobs are being created, wealth is being made everyday on the net but corporations stifle and bleed that stuff. It will be damaging to the rest of us. And ,it is going to happen. they have the power , money and lobbyists to do it. We will suffer for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jHOn0EW8U Here is a simple 3 minute video explaining what will happen soon.
All the more reason we should support local stations and PEG channels (Public/Education/Government, often thought of as “public access”). Our PEG channel covers local events the biggies ignore and we will carry anyone’s opinion, popular or not.
We did a whole section on media consolidation and its effects in a media studies course I took in college. The boiled down, simplified conclusion in all this was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 really boned us. And the professor was quite the liberal so I really don’t think he was just Clinton-bashing.
Net neutrality is more or less a boogeyman used by people who want to bitch and moan about corporations controlling. Yes, net neutrality should be codified into law and the FCC is attempting to do just that. But in the meantime, it is a boogeyman that doesn’t exist in any meaningful way as the majority of web pages are text-based and require very little bandwidth to load. Even if the packets were being throttled, it’s unlikely the average consumer would ever notice.
Now you’re just ranting into the wind. “The Internet” cannot be controlled by corporations as the Internet can’t be controlled by anyone. I’m honestly not even sure what you’re arguing against in this paragraph.
I share your view that the net neutrality issue is a bit overblown, but trying to argue against it with the reason that “bandwidth isn’t a big deal” is a bit naieve. Streaming video is huge and only becoming more so, and that’s just the most obvious example of where that argument falls apart. If people thought bandwidth wasn’t a big deal, dial-up would still be going strong, not be virtually deceased. Hell, Comcast makes their entire net provider living on the concept of bandwidth being king. Their service is extremely unreliable and their tech support is atrocious, but they do manage to provide a lot of bandwidth for a low price. Their continued success is in large part due to that being exactly what many people want.
But that was my point. Because streaming video is growing, net neutrality should be seriously looked at. But because the majority of web pages don’t use video (the net is still dominated by text-based sites), they can’t be throttled in any real way. They’d just load in two seconds instead of one.
The problem here is media consolidation which is never a good thing. You want MORE voices not less.
The Internet is active while radio and TV are passive. You simply turn the latter on and they do all the work. With the Internet you have to search out news, then verify it is correct. This can be very difficult at best.
Here are some potential issues with the NBC/Comcast merger.
First of all will Comcast have to sell off the NBC owned and operated stations (O&O). If not will Comcast give preferential treatment to the NBC stations it owns. What about those stations affiliated with NBC but not owned by Comcast?
You see this creates a conflict of interest. Anytime you have a conflict of interest it’s a bad thing. It’s like if your boss tells you to “be honest” and audit his work and critique it. OK sure there are a few bosses that can take it, but just from that example you can see how a conflict of interest creates issues. You can’t audit someone that can fire you. Well you can but it’s hard to do.
The second major thing is will Comcast turn NBC from a network to a cable channel?
For those not in America let me explain. In the early days of TV, networks could only own seven stations and only 5 of them could be on the VHF part of the spectrum (Channels 2 through 13). This meant in order to cover the nation as a whole networks would have to sign up affiliates. That is stations who would be owned by someone else but agree to show the shows on a network. This restriction has changed. But what it did was set up a system of network affiliates.
In America we also have what’s called a “must carry” rule for TV stations and Cable/Dish systems. What this is basically is this: A TV station can require a cable/Dish provider to pay them for their programming.
So in Chicago, let’s say WFLD (the FOX affiliate) could say to Comcast, either you pay us money or we won’t let you carry our channel.
Now the payment doesn’t have to actually be money, it can be other things. Like WFLD could say in order to show our channel on your cable system, you have to put WFLD on Channel 12 on all your systems. (Currently WFLD has a virtual channel of 32 and the lower channel numbers are thought to be better). Or it can say to Comcast, if you want to carry WFLD you must put WFLD on Channel 12 AND carry all the other cable channel FOX owns. (Like Fox News for instance)
The must carry part comes in like this. If Comcast were to say “Look WFLD, we aren’t gonna pay,” WFLD could invoke “must carry.” What this means is that the Comcast would have to carry WFLD but because “must carry” is invoked then Comcast wouldn’t have to pay any money or other compensation (like channel number etc)
OK with this explination people fear Comcast will turn NBC into a cable channel. In otherwords they will say NBC will no longer be available to stations over the air. It will be only available on cable. Since NBC ratings are so low now, it’s a remote possibilty. Especially when you consider Comcast may not want to pay the NBC affiliates to carry it.
Remember my above example with WFLD - FOX? Well the NBC affiliate if not owned by Comcast would require money too. Comcast could just pull NBC off over the air and make it cable exclusive.
Of course cable TV is about 85% of households, though this isn’t an even 85%. What that means is some markets are much higher up to 95% while other markets are have cable penetration under 50%. The total national average is 85%. And that 85% refers to households not TV. In otherwords if ONE TV is hooked up to cable you’re counted in that 85% even if you have three other TV that are using OTA (over the air).
Also blacks and Hispanics have much much less (in some urban area less than 25% of the average) of cable TV penetration.
There’s a host of other reasons why people fear this, but those are the main two.
- Will Comcast be able to be fair?
- Will Comcast pull NBC and make it a cable network?
No they won’t, and it’s silly to even speculate because they would be slashing their advertising rates down to zero while simultaneously pissing off hundreds of affiliates. Also, they would likely be voiding their contracts with the NFL and the Olympics, as presumably there’s a clause in there about NBC being an OTA network.
Of course that’s not true if the ISP can accurately identify a source (or type of data) to block and actually wants to throttle the stream. Honestly, let’s assume each packet is 1500 bytes; that’s an awful lot of packets for even the simplest web page with a few thumbnails. A one second artificial delay on each packet would make loading any page unbearably slow.
Furthermore, as you well know, “web pages” != “internet”. Telephony (VoIP) services, for instance, for which any latency growth is an app-killer.
Bigger is not better. The 3 big cable companies control 90 percent of subscribers. They are extremely wealthy corporations. American internet is way down the world list of speed and innovation. Last I saw we were number 17 in speed. The other countries with government push and competition have plans to saturate the market, and get faster and faster. There is little motivation for a company to innovate if they control the market. You can buy what they offer or go without. They have no reason to constantly upgrade . Where are you going to go?
What Comcast will likely do is demand part ownership of anything you want to run on their networks and internet. They have no intention of providing a service. They will do everything they can to control the market and make more money. They will have control of the programming. i am sure some of you believe they would not interfere with the message. But that is not reality. They will just because they can.
In what way do cable companies control their subscribers? I subscribed to a big cable company but got a better offer and switched to satellite. I didn’t like satellite and switched to fiber optic. If they do not meet my needs I can switch back.
I remember a time with 5 channels and one newspaper in each city. Now I have 200 channels and can read almost any paper in the world, yet people whine about corporations controlling information. There has never been a time in the history of the world with easier access to information and entertainment. This is golden age, enjoy it.
In Detroit, we used to have 3 newspapers. The Times went down and the News and Free Press merged. We have one terrible paper now. It is horrible and it is mostly on line. It is a shell of a newspaper.
I have AT& T for cable. The price difference between Comcast, Wow and Mmne are negligible. We have had 2 different startups for cable since I got cable. Comcast swallowed them up rapidly. There is no competition.
The internet does provide a lot of news. The point is that if we allow the mergers to continue, it will be concentrated in 3 or 4 hands. They also create their own programming. I suspect they will give maximum upload speed to their own sites and programming. Will they do the same for countering viewpoints? Would they slow down the left wing sites until they were too annoying to use? Yes they would. It is possible we would have 3 Fox news networks in charge of everything you read, watch and hear. The viewpoints of the corporations in charge of media are pretty much the same. Countering viewpoints would get smothered .
It is very clear that corporations want to control the message. That is what we will allow them to do big time. The people are served best when there is equal access for many views. The rich are served when their views dominate the airwaves , internet and reading material. It is not a way to educate or inform the people. I fear for the republic when they take over and they will.
Fox Broadcasting and Fox News are about as diametrically opposed in political viewpoint as you can get. And they’re owned by the same man. Catering to multiple viewpoints is in the best interests of the moneymen and the populace.