Merger 'Conditions' Can't Fail As Big Deals Are On The Line

[Commentary] On any given day, on any given cable or satellite system, subscribers will see a message telling them that a favorite channel which had been in one spot on the channel lineup has been shifted to another. It happens all the time as channels are added, subtracted or moved around. It's not a big deal. Unless, of course, the cable channel in question is Bloomberg Television.

Since March 2011, Bloomberg has been trying to hold the Comcast-NBCU media behemoth to the promises it made, and agreed to, in order to complete the takeover that resulted in one of the biggest media companies in history. Comcast's power and influence belies its rankings of #66 on the Fortune 500 and #101 on the Financial Times Global 500. The numbers don't show the power of the largest cable provider, largest high-speed Internet provider, a TV network, a movie studio and numerous cable channels all rolled into one. But the sad story of this issue and other behavior, including that of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) begs the questions of how far the FCC is willing to go now that it has an even bigger deal with Verizon, Comcast and major cable companies to reshape the telecommunications business in the U.S. Under the deal, Verizon will buy for $3.6 billion spectrum the cable companies couldn't or wouldn't use to go into the wireless business. Verizon wireless will, in turn, market cable's landline high-speed Internet businesses. The answers are not encouraging.