Comcast’s buy of Time Warner Cable wouldn’t substantially...
Comcast’s buy of Time Warner Cable wouldn’t substantially increase Comcast’s power over programmers, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen told former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt Monday on The Digital Show, Hundt’s SiriusXM radio show. “I really don’t see how moving…
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from 22 billion customers to 30 billion customers is going to dramatically increase our negotiating leverage,” said Cohen. Since cable faces video competition from DBS, over-the-top and elsewhere, Comcast won’t be in that much better a position after the TWC deal, he said. “Maybe we would have a little more negotiating power, but the control for must-have content is still likely to be in the control of the programmer and not the multichannel video distributor,” Cohen said. He also said the Comcast/TWC deal should be approved because Comcast and TWC aren’t competitors. “I think people should ask themselves why that is and if that’s really the natural state of the world,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood, who also appeared on the episode. “There’s nothing today other than perhaps some licensing agreements and the historical unwillingness of cable operators to cross over and overbuild each other that would prevent Comcast and TWC from competing at least online,” Wood said. Hundt also spoke with MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett about the cable deal. The effect of the Comcast/TWC deal on programmers is likely to “get a lot of scrutiny in the FCC” because it has the potential to create “a company so large that it controls what [viewpoints] Americans can and can’t hear,” Moffett said.