Analysis

Discovery Communications has agreed to acquire Scripps Networks Interactive for $11.9 billion, combining two powerhouses of nonfiction television programming at a time of major upheaval in the cable-TV business. The tie-up is a bet that bigger is better as the television industry is upended by cord-cutting and the rise of “skinny” online TV bundles from the likes of Hulu, YouTube, Sling TV and others. The thinking is that a broader portfolio of channels that specialize in nonfiction and lifestyle programming like travel, food and nature could appeal to younger viewers and give the combined company a leg up in negotiations with advertisers and programming distributors.

The deal will create a must-buy network group for advertisers interested in targeting women and help the network command more premium ad rates. Of the top 20 US cable networks, the merged company will control four of the top five with the highest percentage of female viewers—TLC, HGTV, Investigation Discovery and Food Network. Discovery said it would be able to expand Scripps’s channels into more overseas markets, which could help generate significant additional revenue. The combined company is also touting its short-form video production, which will help it gain more viewers and ad dollars on social-media platforms. The deal could put pressure on other media companies, from AMC Networks to Viacom Inc., that must defend their turf on the cable dial.

As congressional Democrats rolled out their new “Better Deal” agenda for the American people, even some in their own ranks were surprised by the level of interest in the party’s new agenda on antitrust and competition policy. One reason for that is that even some members of Congress may not be aware of how significant the commitments are that Democrats are making. After all, to a casual observer/member of Congress, invocations of the interests of “workers” and “small businesses” can easily seem like boilerplate rhetoric — the mom and apple pie of economic policy. But they actually seal the deal on a significant transformation of the party’s approach to anti-trust issues, one that’s actually been building for some time. Democrats are saying, with increasing clarity, that they want to overthrow a legal paradigm that’s existed for about 40 years and which held that consumer welfare — typically as measured by consumer prices — is the sole relevant metric for making antitrust policy.

Earlier this year, the Yale Law Journal had published a 24,000-word “note” by Lina Khan titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” The article laid out with remarkable clarity and sophistication why American antitrust law has evolved to the point that it is no longer equipped to deal with tech giants such as Amazon, which has made itself as essential to commerce in the 21st century as the railroads, telephone systems and computer hardware makers had been in the 20th.

It’s not just Amazon, however, that animates concerns about competition and market power, and Khan is not the only one who is worrying. The same issues lie behind the European Union’s recent $2.7 billion fine against Google for favoring its own services in the search results it presents to its users. They are also at the heart of the long-running battle in the telecom industry over net neutrality, and the ability of cable companies and Internet service providers to give favorable treatment to their own content. They are implicated in complaints that Facebook has aided the rise of “fake news” while draining readers and revenue from legitimate news media. They even emerge in debates over the corrupting role of corporate money in politics, the decline in entrepreneurship, the slowdown in corporate investment and the rise of income inequality.

LinkedIn may very well succeed in its effort to stop a San Francisco (CA) startup from using the data of its members. But the Sunnyvale (CA) company, now a division of Microsoft, has certainly lost the moral high ground. In fact, the job-hunting and networking site is guilty of blatant hypocrisy. HiQ Labs makes software that analyzes data from public LinkedIn profiles to help employers determine which workers are likely to leave or stay. But at a hearing at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, lawyers representing LinkedIn argued that HiQ was causing significant harm to its business because members expected LinkedIn to protect their privacy. LinkedIn’s most valuable currency is “trust with customers,” said Donald Verrilli, a partner with Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm in Washington. That sounds very noble. But the very idea of a social media giant serving as the champion of privacy rights seems suspect. When a service tells you it’s free, that means it’s making money another way. And more likely than not, you’re the product.

The infrastructure we rely on every day to make sure our digital clocks are in sync or to protect our credit card information when we shop online is often maintained by a single volunteer. This means that often, just one person makes sure that the essential software code that powers so many of the products and services we use every day runs smoothly.

This is because the same free software code is used for the critical components in many different kinds of software: No one person “owns” it. This enables innovation, because everyone can build off what has come before, and makes it possible for more technology to be created at a lower cost, because no one needs to start from scratch. But this free, public code—which we refer to as open source software—needs regular upkeep and maintenance, just as physical infrastructure does, and because it doesn’t belong to any one person or party, it is no one person’s job to maintain it. Without maintenance, we see the digital equivalent of a crumbling road or a collapsing bridge. Some people call this phenomenon a “tragedy of the commons.”

[Commentary] President Donald Trump and his loyalists potentially find the release of nearly any information about what they’re doing to be offensive, no matter how mundane. Often this is couched in the use of the word “leaks.” There are real leaks in the White House, and information has been provided to the news media that is unusually sensitive in nature. There are also more anodyne leaks of the palace-intrigue variety. And then there are things that are called leaks but which aren’t. President Trump and his core allies want you to know only what President Trump wants you to know. Everything else is leaks or “fake news.” Or, somehow, both.

The good news: Cameras were allowed to record July 26’s White House briefing. The bad news: They didn’t have a whole lot to record.

The crew of White House correspondents had a number of questions about the new White House policy on the service of transgender Americans in the military — a policy that President Donald Trump announced on twitter. Of course, any policy change announced via three tweets invites questions, owing to the fact that 420 characters leave only so much room for details. But the back and forth at the briefing did not go well. The questions were about a proactive White House policy announced directly by the President of the United States. Accordingly, the White House press secretary should be brimming with facts and perspectives and talking points. Or at least an answer as to what happens to current transgender service members. That she sounded like a besieged PR type speaks to a matter of continuity in the Trump White House: Though a new communications director — Anthony Scaramucci — took over recently, Trump’s spokespeople appear to be no better briefed on the issues of the day than they’ve been over the past six months.

The dearth of information coming from the podium will prompt cries — again — that the briefings are useless. Not true. They show that White House officials are as clueless about the outside world as they are about what’s going on inside the building.

The Federal Communications Commission is well on its way towards repealing its existing network neutrality rules, which ban internet service providers from blocking legal content, slowing down specific connections, or charging tolls for so-called "fast lanes" on the internet. But the "replace" half will fall to Congress. And that's going to be much harder.

Earlier in July Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), a longtime net neutrality advocate, said that he would only support a net neutrality bill that provided the same level of consumer protection that the FCC's current regulations do. He also dismissed the idea that the Federal Trade Commission could enforce such rules. "This is not their beat, their beat is not communications," Sen Wyden said, echoing similar concerns from activists. Republicans could pass a bill without support from Democrats, but only if they can draft a bill that they all support. But just like replacing Obamacare, that's not as easy as it sounds.

President Donald Trump went on a Twitter rampage July 24 and 25, spewing a number of false and misleading claims — many of which we have fact-checked previously. The President tweeted, "So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News. They are as bad as ratings challenged @CNN. Lobbyist for Amazon and taxes?" as well as, "Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?"

We will begin with a pair of tweets attacking The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Amazon does not own The Post, but in any case the president’s claims about “no-tax” Amazon are out of date. Amazon used to lobby to keep Internet sales free from state taxes, but no more. As of March, Amazon is collecting sales tax on purchases in every state that has one.

In a recent paper published by the Internet Association, a trade group representing Internet edge companies, Dr. Christopher Hooton commented on my earlier work on the investment effects of the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet regulations. In addition, Dr. Hooton presents his own empirical study of investment effects, concluding that his analysis indicates “no (negative) impact from either the 2010 or 2015 [Net Neutrality] actions.”

Dr. Hooton’s conclusions differ materially from my research, which finds large negative impacts on telecommunications infrastructure investment following the FCC’s regulatory actions in 2010 and 2015. As for Dr. Hooton’s criticism of my work, I demonstrate why they are invalid. Moreover, I will consider Dr. Hooton’s own empirical contribution on the investment effects of Net Neutrality regulation. While Dr. Hooton’s analysis is fatally flawed (as he admits), his work is important in a few respects.