Ownership

When the biggest platforms seem to be flailing or punting on problems, it’s often because they’re trying to address broad social issues with market solutions. They’re rediscovering, at scale and at great expense to their users, the ways in which a society is more than a bazaar, and the pitfalls of allowing human attention to be sold and resold as a commodity. If a platform is addressing a collective problem in a maddeningly strange way, consider that it might see itself, or only know to govern itself, like an eBay.

Smaller cable operators are getting an assist from the American Civil Liberties Union in their effort to block the Sinclair-Tribune deal.  In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, the ACLU pulled out all the stops, invoking viewpoint diversity and the legal underpinnings of media ownership regulation to argue the deal should be rejected. It also spent some some time defending cable operators from what it said were the threats from the deal.

Apparently, Walt Disney Co. is close to winning US antitrust approval for its $71 billion deal for 21st Century Fox Inc.’s entertainment assets, creating a potentially insurmountable hurdle for a rival bid from Comcast. The Justice Department is set to approve the deal in as soon as two weeks, according to an unnamed source. Disney has agreed to sell some assets to address competition problems stemming from the tie-up. 

While offering billions in a bidding war for most of 21st Century Fox’s TV and film assets, both Disney and Comcast are also on the front lines of a battle of words, each trying to position its bid as the one most likely to gain regulatory approval from the government. To be sure, both deals would likely be scrutinized by the Justice Department for different reasons. “I’m not prepared to say which is better positioned,” said Georgetown Economics and Law professor Steve Salop .

The Communications Workers of America, National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-CWA, the NewsGuild-CWA, and the Parents Television Council have all filed petitions with the Federal Communications Commission asking it to deny the merger between Sinclair and Tribune, which would create the largest broadcast group in the country with over 200 stations.

Apparently, federal authorities have subpoenaed the publisher of the National Enquirer for records related to its $150,000 payment to a former Playboy model for the rights to her story alleging an affair with Donald Trump. The subpoena from Manhattan federal prosecutors requesting information from the publisher, American Media Inc., about its August 2016 payment to Karen McDougal is part of a broader criminal investigation of President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to Google expressing concerns over the company’s partnership with the Chinese phone maker Huawei. The group of senators and congressmen said that the partnership poses national security concerns, in step with previous efforts to keep Chinese tech firms, including ZTE and Huawei, from doing business in the US.

Despite recent buzz that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai would be scheduling a vote at the July 12 public meeting on a proposal related to the FCC's review of the 39% ownership cap/UHF discounts, such an item did not make the agenda.

When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com Inc more than two decades ago, he sought to keep the online bookstore away from the government’s reach. He has said he looked into placing its headquarters on an Indian reservation as a tax-saving strategy. That was then. Today, Amazon, whose revenues in 2017 topped $177 billion, has become deeply entwined with the federal government. Bezos has built one of the largest lobbying operations in Washington, bigger than those of powerhouses such as Exxon Mobile and Walmart.

As many of you know, on June 12 Judge Richard Leon of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against the US government and in favor of AT&T’s application to merge with Time Warner, without the imposition of any conditions. From the viewpoint of many, both the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice have been stuck in administrative molasses, seeking to apply sectoral market analysis, preserve questionable bright line tests, and continue the imposition of rigid restrictions as part of transactional reviews the same way now as in 2008, 1988, or 1958.