by Pete Wright
I went to high school with a kid just like Comcast. He was a big kid, with big, giant, black hair. He’d spouted some story about how his long ago distant cousin was related to Russian royalty, a tzar or Rumplestiltskin or some such.
One day, this great oak of a boy shows up in a shiny new car. He says his divorcee mom has agreed to buy liquor for his high school parties because, he says, “she says that if she buys the booze and my friends come to my house, that will keep us all out of trouble.”
Of course, so will prison, largely.
So the parties move to the Russian’s house, much booze is bought, and this Comcastic train-wreck of a boy never realizes that cosmically, in spite of the dark glasses that he wears and the cool car that he drives, and even in spite of the gallons of alcohol his mom brings to the house … he is still, fundamentally, a jerk.
And here we go again, history repeating itself gloriously. Now, Comcast gets to be the Russian kid, and GE gets to be the guy who only drank soda and goes home with the head cheerleader.
To be sure, this is an absolute dream come true for Comcast. This is the brass ring, it’s the big show. The really, really big show. Now, the cable provider, the distribution network, owns the pipes and a controlling interest in the gas, too. TimeWarner got close, but never quite executed. Comcast thinks it’s going to make good on that.
GE is walking away with a bit of cash — $13 billion — so enough to roll out another microwave oven. More importantly, GE gets freedom. NBC is like that skin tag on your hip that keeps growing and growing, but not doing anything useful. NBC was the goofy stepbrother that came to dinner and never left, back when GE acquired RCA in 1986. If you’re GE in this situation, this is good riddance to bad rubbish.
The problem with all this rot is in the series of flags it raises. Some are big flags. Some are little ones… but they’re all sort of red.
One big one is network neutrality. I’m actually against network neutrality. It’s a market-driven concept and in it’s purest form — paying a premium for higher speed access to content — it serves the people who get content delivered. That’s a good thing. Let the market rule.
Comcast has a different idea of network neutrality, though, and it looks something like internet divestiture. Imagine a day in which you wake up and want to watch the latest “30 Rock” only to find out that you aren’t a paying subscriber to that internet.
As television content moves more and more online, the thought of pillar NBC shows moving behind the Comcast gate could get damned near anti-competitive. And that’s not me talking, that’s my man Ed Markey (D-Mass.), voice of the little people.
“This proposed deal raises significant questions about consumer choice and competition, innovation and investment in the media marketplace that merit close scrutiny by Congress, the FCC and the Justice Department.”
Best thing that could come out of this rot is the dialog. In the end, Comcast will get their NBC. If history is any indicator, they’ll likely do something stupid with it (I’m sorry, but I’m looking at you, Hulu). But more people who should be talking about these issues in the media marketplace will be talking about them. Out of the ash of big media resignation, though, comes the realization that the media marketplace has already shifted right out from under the mergers and acquisitions. The future isn’t Comcast’s, or NBC’s. The future belongs to the rest of us — latent storytellers waiting for the next writer’s strike, the next studio gaff, the next “GI Joe” for an opportunity to give their stories, real and rich stories, life and freedom.
