Big Cable's Powell: Comcast/NBCU Merger Net Positive for Industry

Appearing on C-PAN's The Communicators, National Cable & Telecommunications Association President and former FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he thinks the Comcast/NBCU merger would be a net positive for the industry, providing some 'real glue' for an industry already melding increasingly disparate interests.

Powell said he was not sure how having Comcast and NBC under the same NCTA tent was going to shake out. "We'll react to how they begin to propagate their interest," he said. Those propagating that interest now include Powell's NCTA predecessor Kyle McSlarrow and former FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who are now in charge of managing the NBCU message in Washington. "It changes the dynamic inside the association, he said, but, "on net, for the better. You have the country's largest cable operator, also a significant programmer. It provides us no real alternative. We are an association that is now bound together, as we should have been anyway. But I think Comcast helps make that real glue."