Ownership

Radio and television stations’ local content – particularly news – provides great value for audiences on the major technology platforms. However, broadcasters are not fairly compensated for this valuable content because of the way the markets currently operate. The reason for that is simple – these tech platforms have substantial market power in their provision of services, and they use that power for advancing their own growth and benefit to the detriment of local broadcast journalism.

The upcoming sale of Yahoo and AOL to a private equity firm for $5 billion represents a massive media markdown. At their dotcom bubble peaks, Yahoo and AOL were valued at more than $125 billion and $200 billion, respectively, or $193 billion and $318 billion in 2021 dollars. AOL made one giant mistake. It famously bought Time Warner for $182 billion in cash and stock in 2000, saddling the company with debt just before the dotcom bubble burst and the rise of broadband made AOL's dial-up services virtually obsolete.

Apollo Global Management agreed to pay about $5 billion to acquire Yahoo and AOL from Verizon as the wireless company exits its ill-fated foray into the media business. The private-equity firm is paying $4.25 billion in cash for a 90% share of the media assets. Verizon will keep a 10% stake and $750 million of additional preferred stock in the new company, called Yahoo, that will be formed to operate the business. Verizon Media, which mostly struggled to grow against Alphabet's Google and Facebook, generated $7 billion in revenue in 2020.

The behaviors of platform and social media companies have evolved under the heat of the spotlight. Regulation takes time, and a lot of hearings, to produce tangible results. One upshot of four years of high-profile hearings is that tech companies now know how to play the game. Sometimes the goal isn't to pass a law. Congress uses the bully pulpit to force companies to self-regulate.

Comcast continues to shift its emphasis from being a cable TV company to being a digital company. Comcast has: 19 million cable subscribers, a loss of 491,000 since December; 31 million broadband internet subscribers; a gain of 461,000; and 42 million sign-ups to the streaming platform Peacock, a jump of 9 million. Comcast sells something that has proved more durable than sports and entertainment: broadband, the piping that carries all streaming platforms. In the first quarter, sales increased 12 percent, to $5.6 billion.

A Q&A with Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) about her new Antitrust book.

Q: You’ve talked a lot about big tech; when we talk about big tech, we almost always talk about the consumer companies at the edge. It feels like the internet providers, which are monopolies for most people, are not receiving this level of scrutiny. You used to be a telecom lawyer, you worked for MCI. Do you think that scrutiny is coming for the Comcasts and the AT&Ts and Spectrum Cables of the world as well?

Cox has agreed to purchase the commercial enterprise and carrier business of fiber company Segra from private equity company EQT Infrastructure. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although some published reports put the value of the deal at around $3 billion. Segra, based in Charlotte (NC), is one of the largest privately-held infrastructure providers in the country. As part of the deal, EQT will retain Segra’s residential and small-to-medium sized business segment in Virginia and North Carolina.

To truly unleash the power of localized broadband deployment, we should ensure all community-based providers have a seat at the table.