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Ninety-one of the 99 House members and three of the five senators who wrote the FCC urging support for the $28 billion merger received donations from Comcast in the election cycle that began Jan. 1, 2009, sometimes within days of the letters.
“That’s buying political favors,” Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, said in an interview. “This full-court press on Congress is out of the ordinary.”
As you all know by now, Obama’s FCC approved the Comcast/NBC merger on Monday,January 17,2010. I guess that it did not matter to the FCC that many consumer groups were against this merger because this act gives Comcast way to much influence in watch you may be allowed to watch on your television,and with watch you may be able to see on the Internet.
"Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal is a transaction like no other that has come before this commission — ever," Copps said in a statement. "It reaches into virtually every corner of our media and digital landscapes and will affect every citizen in the land. It is new media as well as old; it is news and information as well as sports and entertainment; it is distribution as well as content."
I should note that in order for this deal to gain approval,both the FCC and the Department of Justice(?) made Comcast agree to certain restrictions as far as raising prices for NBC content to other cable services, and a few other areas was concerned.
Specifically, the FCC is requiring that Comcast sell its content to online distributors at the same price offered to cable and satellite companies. The FCC also said it would force Comcast to "offer stand-alone broadband Internet access services at reasonable prices and of sufficient bandwidth" so that customers have the option to watch online video services without having to be a Comcast cable customer.
The government set conditions, most of which expire in seven years, that prohibit Comcast from withholding its programming from rival cable TV and satellite providers as well as online distributors.
So when those seven years expire, the real consumer fuck-over begins. In the mean time,look for cable rates to begin an increase,and for even more crappy customer service.
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