Media Companies Spending Big on Lobbying

Big media companies are opening their wallets wider and wider to lobby the federal government on issues in which the companies have a vested interest.

The biggest spender in the first quarter of this year was Comcast, which spent a whopping $5.7 million in the first quarter of the year lobbying the government for the go-ahead to close its deal to acquire NBCUniversal. That's almost double the $3.1 million it spent on lobbying during the same period last year.

News Corp. spent $1.57 million on lobbying last quarter, up from $1.08 million year over year. Fox runs 27 TV stations in the United States and will be affected by the possible auctioning off of the stations’ unused spectrum.

Disney, home of 10 TV stations and their unused spectrum, came in not too far behind News Corp. It, too, spent some cash lobbying on the auction legislation. But Disney's total lobbying bill didn't go up much: It doled out $1.4 million in the first quarter of this year, compared to $1.25 million in the same period last year.
Viacom spent $1.1 million on first quarter lobbying efforts, up from $890,000. One issue that the home of MTV and VH1 threw its money behind was a review of the Comcast/NBCUniversal merger and its impact on independent programming.