CNBC

"Of all those companies, Comcast is the most perfectly positioned because they are really on the distribution side in a significant way, and they're on the production side also in a significant way," said Barry Diller at the Internet Association's Virtuous Circle Summit. "Whichever one you bet on for having the ability to grow in the period when big technology companies take over almost anything, that's a pretty good bet." The era of a handful of traditional media companies dominating the landscape is over as more technology giants get in the game, Diller said.

Apparently, 21st Century Fox has been holding talks to sell most of the company to Walt Disney Co., leaving behind a media company tightly focused on news and sports. The talks have taken place over the last few weeks and there is no certainty they will lead to a deal. The two sides are not currently talking at this very moment, but given the on again, off again nature of the talks, they could be revisited.

[Commentary] The press reports that Sprint's owner SoftBank may once again seek to eliminate its rival T-Mobile, perhaps believing that it will find more sympathetic ears in the new administration. But the merger made no sense before, and it makes no sense today.

Ensuring that competition works to consumers' benefit makes policing mergers among competitors a priority that transcends party and politics. Without it, you pay the price. Let's hope the president's professed belief in competition continues and that our successors at the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission act responsibly to block any renewed attempts to stymie the robust wireless competition that consumers are now enjoying.

[Baer was Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and Wheeler was Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.]

An interview with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.

The way many of the headlines about Internet privacy rules are written, Chairman Pai's stance on letting Internet service providers market your usage data doesn't make sense. Why would you want to let Comcast (the parent company of CNBC) or AT&T, or Verizon, for example, sell that information? Chairman Pai argued that's not the point. Companies like Google and Facebook already have access to tons of information on us, Chairman Pai said. Unless we set a level playing field, we let them off the hook. "We just want every company that is handling consumers' data to handle it in the same way. I think that's something that would give consumers a much better sense of confidence when they go online," Chairman Pai said. In other words, if you're outraged about Comcast selling your browsing habits, you should be just as outraged about Silicon Valley doing it. First level the playing field, Chairman Pai suggested, then make rules that apply to everyone. He has a lot of skeptics to win over, especially in the tech world.

Businesses eagerly awaiting regulation rollbacks from the Trump administration may get them in an unexpected place: the internet, according to new Fderal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. "My own view is that the internet should be run by technologists and engineers and business people, not by lawyers and bureaucrats here in the nation's capital," Chairman Pai.

Following that, the newly instated chairman said the agency will adopt "light touch" regulation under his leadership. "Light touch regulation means that we create broad regulatory frameworks that can protect consumers to ensure an overall competitive marketplace," Chairman Pai said. "But we shouldn't micromanage how these companies operate their businesses in the absence of evidence of a market failure." Chairman Pai said the FCC will continue to adhere to the public interest standard and the law when it comes to independently reviewing cases. But letting free market ideals manifest in the tech industry, especially in the area of broadband, will be one of the agency's main priorities, he said.

Count local TV station owners among the industries emboldened by President-elect Donald Trump. In changing of the guards at the White House, the local TV industry sees an opportunity in their ongoing quest to toss out the Federal Communication Commission's rules on media cross-ownership that bar media companies from owning newspapers and TV stations in the same market.

The National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group for TV station owners, "is cautiously optimistic a Trump FCC will take a fresh look at reforming outdated local broadcast ownership rules," said Dennis Wharton, NAB's executive vice president of media relations. "These are 'I Love Lucy' era rules in a 'Modern Family' world." The rules, devised in 1975, specifically prohibit media companies from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same local market. Companies are also barred from owning more than one top-4-in-ratings TV station in any market.

Whether you're a start-up, family-owned, or publicly traded, there's danger in letting your business rely too heavily on Google search for site traffic.

One morning in May, Linda Stradley woke up to find her online recipe and cooking business in crisis. The number of visitors to the site, which had reached around 5 million a month, was suddenly down by 44 percent, cutting ad earnings by 56 percent.

Google periodically, and without notice, upgrades its service to push spammy websites and content farms lower down in search results. The goal is to create a better Internet, where users are more likely to find the best and most relevant websites based on their search terms.

Google said the latest algorithm change, announced in a tweet from the head of its webspam team on May 20, would affect about 7.5 percent of English queries that are noticeable to users.

While the updates are targeted at bad actors, for people like Stradley, who aren't trying to game the system, they can be devastating. At 72, Stradley works at least eight hours a day and relies on the income from her website and its more than 3,000 pages. She says the costs will be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Whether in food, travel, personal finance or e-commerce, any website that needs to be discovered needs Google. The company controls 68 percent of the US search market, according to ComScore, and reeled in more than $50 billion in advertising sales in 2013.

Sites like Stradley’s whatscookingamerica.net use Google's ad-serving technology and share revenue with the search engine. Google has made over 890 such improvements in 2013, Jason Freidenfelds, a company spokesman, said.

Imagine the chance to own Time Warner's TBS before the cable network was fully distributed across the country. Or how about CBS before it had convinced cable companies to pay it several hundred million dollars a year to carry its network?

Believe it or not, investors still have a similar opportunity: Tribune. The company, which owns 42 TV stations along with newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, emerged from a four-year bankruptcy in late 2012. Since then, Tribune has been below the radar of most investors because the stock trades over the counter and the company doesn't perform normal functions like investor conference calls.

Yet Tribune is on the verge of turning some of its sleepy assets into big moneymakers.

First consider its portfolio of TV stations, which mainly includes affiliates of 21st Century Fox's Fox and The CW, a joint venture network between Time Warner and CBS. At the moment, those stations generate revenue from advertising, but they are probably earning far less than they should be.

Tribune's other big opportunity is WGN, a so-called superstation based in Chicago that reaches about 75 million homes, according to SNL Financial. WGN carries local Chicago-oriented content like Cubs and Bulls games, along with other filler material like comedy reruns.

Tribune's print business, while not likely to grow much, could also provide a surprise windfall. The company plans to spin it off into a separately listed company in 2014, just as News Corp did in 2013