Little Opportunity for Public Interest Advocates to Do Anything on Comcast Buying Rest of NBCU
A day after Comcast said it had agreed to buy General Electric’s remaining 49 percent of NBCUniversal (CD Feb 13 p9), former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps called the deal “proof positive” that the rationale for media consolidation is to “please Wall Street,” not serve the public. “What’s missing in these deals -- and our regulatory policy -- is a commitment to the public interest, said Copps, now a special adviser to Common Cause: “It’s time we stand up to media monopolies."
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Public interest advocates will have to wait for another deal to come along before they get that chance. Comcast’s agreement to buy GE’s minority interest in the joint-venture that controls NBCU won’t trigger further regulatory review, public interest advocates and Comcast said.
"As a regulatory matter, the ship has essentially sailed,” said Todd O'Boyle, a program director at Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform initiative. “There’s not much advocates can do,” he said. “If anything, they should just be prepared for the next wave of mergers and acquisitions, as these things tend to come in waves."
The commission already approved the transfer of control of the FCC licenses involved in the deal when it granted the applications in 2011. The deal disclosed Tuesday (http://bit.ly/XBw6kP) involves no change in control, pro forma or otherwise, a Comcast spokeswoman said. The FCC and Department of Justice already authorized Comcast to acquire GE’s remaining interest in NBCU when those agencies approved the original transaction, she said. “All that is happening now is that Comcast is acquiring GE’s interest sooner than originally anticipated."
The deal and timing are good for both Comcast and GE, Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis told analysts Wednesday. He was asked to explain why the price Comcast agreed to pay, at about $18.1 billion for the company and some real estate GE owns and NBCU uses, was slightly lower than analysts had expected. GE gets the cash now instead of having to wait for two separate tranches, the last of which it wouldn’t see until near the end of 2018, Angelakis said. “From our standpoint, it was an advantage to accelerate that,” he said. “We're quite pleased with the price and with how we've structured the transaction."
Q4 sales at Comcast, including NBCU, increased 5.9 percent from a year earlier to about $15 billion, the company said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/12h2U6D) at around the same time the GE deal was disclosed. Sales at its cable systems increased 7 percent to $9.5 billion while NBCU sales gained 4.8 percent from a year earlier to $5.7 billion. Overall profit increased 14 percent from a year earlier to $1.8 billion, it said.