NBC-Comcast Merger: Bad for Us?

[american_arcane]

Originally published at Toob Talk. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[doc_quixote]

I'll add the comment that so many analysts have made: Yeah, the content + delivery merger worked out real well for Time-Warner.

[american_arcane]

Time-Warner buying AOL was a very bad idea from the start as AOL was already having some issues keeping up with the times. TW seriously over paid for AOL and never made them work hard enough to turn things around.

Comcast and NBC-Universal are in a slightly different position. The web landscape is more open now than it was with the TW-AOL merge and the markets more developed both up and downstream.

Granted, big business is fantastic at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but, all things being equal, I'm still a bit concerned.

[nongamer]

On Long Island, Newsday (one of the largest newspapers by circulation in the country) is now owned by Cablevision. FIOS used to have a full page ad in Newsday every day, now Newsday will not sell to them.

What happens when Comcast owns NBC Universal? Satellite and FIOS can no longer carry their channels? Or Comcast/NBC Universal just charges so much to license them that Comcast starts being 10 bucks a month cheaper than the alternatives and everyone abandons satellite and FIOS?

[american_arcane]

That's exactly the sort of thing I'd be worried about in the short-term.

Especially if the FCC just rolls over and lets it happen.

[nongamer]

On the surface that conventional TV broadcasting thing seems like the scary part, but it's really things like Hulu Comcast is after. Comcast has been poaching the grad students from Penn's computer science department for years. What can grad students in computer science do -- invent compression algorithms for HD streaming...

Eeeee...villl.....

[qlipoth]

I'm really not concerned about this happening