Under Assault

US District Court Judge Richard Leon’s decision to approve the AT&T-TimeWarner merger was a horse-and-buggy decision utterly blind to the realities of the twenty-first-century economy. His magnum opus means that one of the largest internet service providers is permitted to merge with one of the largest TV and film companies, thereby creating a powerful entity controlling the content and distribution of some of the most important programming in the market.  Marrying content and carriage creates gatekeepers with every incentive to favor their own services at the expense of their competitors, and now the court is telling AT&T and everyone else that’s just fine. The judge tells us that we needn’t worry about a merger that combines both content and distribution. Well, I worry. I worry about sure-to-come rising prices for consumers.  I worry about the disappearance of diverse programmers across the video marketplace. I worry about the newsrooms and journalism jobs that will be lost.  I worry about small and medium-sized innovators and entrepreneurs who will find thousands of opportunities no longer open to them. 

[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009]