Comcast's bid to buy Disney would create the largest media company in the world - a bad deal for the American public, which has fewer and fewer sources for information.
Published February 16, 2004
Cable giant Comcast would like to buy entertainment titan Disney for $50-billion, give or take a few billion dollars. Needless to say, this would be a big deal. The combined company would join News Corp. and Time Warner as one of only three worldwide players to control the media pipeline - from creating news and entertainment content to distributing it over airwaves and cable. Comcast shareholders and Disney board members have expressed doubts about the deal, and the American public shouldn't be happy with it, either.
Such anticompetitive activities used to be illegal. Now, in the lightly regulated media marketplace, they are commonly allowed even though the result is ever more centralized control of information choices.
Unlike the fantasy world Disney has created, there are no good guys in this story. Comcast is controlled by the ruthlessly acquisitive Roberts family, which owns less than 2 percent of the company but controls a third of its voting power. Although the Disney image is beloved, the company isn't, mainly because chief Michael Eisner is a bully whose poor decisions have left the company ripe for the picking. While the two companies may deserve each other, the public deserves better.
Then there is the Federal Communications Commission. It is telling of the regulatory process that when the merger effort went public, Congress and FCC Chairman Michael Powell were wringing their hands over singer Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl. As it turns out, the real obscenity is the ease with which a few corporate interests have gained control of the media marketplace.
The federal government saw no evil in allowing Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. - which owns the Fox network and film studios and a string of newspapers - to acquire satellite broadcaster DirecTV. And last year, the FCC ruled that TV companies could buy up an even greater share of local stations, a decision that is being challenged in court.
In other words, no one can count on the regulatory process to watch out for the little guy. Congress acts as though it is concerned but has taken little action. Of the Comcast-Disney merger, Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, warned "further media consolidation in the industry is troubling."
Yes, it is. A diverse and competitive media is necessary to maintain a healthy democracy, yet we are headed in the other direction. The public needs to tell lawmakers, while it can still get the message out, that no further media consolidation will be tolerated.
