March 2010

The Comcast/NBCU merger has drawn its first petition to deny from self-described "Pan-Asian" group called the Mabuhay Alliance, which felt neglected by what they said was a lack of references to their constituency in the proposed deal's filing, including its public interest filing.

"The combined 749 page application and appendix contain no references to America's 15 million Asian Americans or any references as to their past treatment or future treatment by Comcast and NBCU," the group said in opposing the deal as currently constituted. But they suggested there was a way to make them happier. "As a condition for allowing this proceeding to continue," they said. "we formally request that the FCC order Comcast to revise its 145 page application and set forth specific and unique benefits this acquisition will have for 15 million Asian Americans, including those most ignored, such as Vietnamese Americans, Korean Americans, Filipino Americans, Samoans, Hmong, Thais, Cambodians and Indonesians."

Media billionaire John Malone said fee disputes between U.S. broadcasters and cable-television operators will force companies to combine to gain negotiating clout.

"The biggest distributors have some leverage in that negotiation because they can do damage," Malone, 69, said yesterday in an interview. "The smaller distributors are going to be pretty powerless to protect themselves from getting creamed, so it's going to lead to more consolidation." Cablevision could gain scale by merging with Time Warner Cable, bolstering its influence, said David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. "If the Comcast-NBC deal can get done without the FCC or DOJ neutering any of the positives in that combination, then there's any host of other media merger combinations that could make sense," said Joyce. Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp., the biggest U.S. cable operator, agreed to take over broadcast and film company NBC Universal last year.

A cyberattack prevented the online transmission of results from last weekend's congressional elections in Colombia , while final returns have still not been released three days after the balloting due to organizational problems. Ivan Ribon, director of the Arolen firm, responsible for communicating the elections results over the Internet, told RCN radio Wednesday that his company had been targeted by hackers. The cyberattack initially led to intermittent updating of the returns from Sunday's balloting and later caused a complete loss of service. Once "the channels for communicating the results were opened, we began to notice (an abnormal number of hits) on the Web site ... an extremely large-scale attack that lasted all (Sunday) night," he said. The executive added that the Attorney General's Office was alerted to the problem and that a formal complaint will be filed Wednesday.

[Commentary] What will happen to a city when the last major newspaper dies? If you are white, and probably a male, you may not have noticed that we've been living in this doomsday scenario for years, if not decades. For African Americans, Native Americans, Asian, Latino... or gays... or under 25... or female... they know that their communities have been, and continue to be, routinely left out of their newspaper. They typically make the news for holidays, crime or food. For many of them, newspapers aren't dying... they're already dead.