The proposed $45 billion merger Comcast-Time Warner that would unite America’s two largest cable companies has the Writers Guild of America West and WGA East imploring the FCC to “put a stop to this spat of merger madness.” The organizations on both coasts issued separate no-nonsense statements. “We have reached a critical juncture,” said WGAW President Chris Keyser, “in the history of the media, broadband and telecommunications industries.” Keyser warned that ongoing media mergers endanger “every principle of free market economics we deem important and jeopardizes the tremendous potential that the digital age has to offer all of us.” In 2010, the guild cited similar reasons in its protest against the Comcast and NBC Universal merger. (That merger went through.)
The Future of Music Coalition (a national nonprofit education, research and advocacy group) also spoke out against the Comcast-TWC merger: “The guild and the Coalition assert that because the deal would grant an unprecedented amount of power to a single entity, harm consumers and create a serious threat to competition in the video and broadband marketplace, it does not meet the FCC’s criteria for serving the public interest.”
