Showing posts with label comcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comcast. Show all posts

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Need for an Antitrust Action against Comcast, TimeWarner, and Disney


Dear Mr. President:

The deterioration of the American media and its open partisanship should be addressed through an antitrust action.  More than 75 percent of airwave and cable broadcasters are in practice affiliated with the Democratic Party.  This came about because in the 1930s the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration illegally required ideological litmus tests in its granting of airwave monopolies.  

When the country had something of a dominant, bipartisan consensus, perhaps from the candidacy of Wendell L. Wilke through the George W. Bush administration, partisan monopoly of the airwaves was unimportant, although conservatives have never been happy. When the cable monopolies were established by local governments in the 1970s and 1980s, the extension of the New Deal system seemed natural, although by then the media was increasingly at odds with moderate Republicans. Moreover, the major parties had not diverged ideologically to the degree that they have since Goldwater and McGovern--and to a greater degree since Obama. Conservatives have lived with an unresponsive, monopolistic media for the past ninety years.

The recent handling of the impeachment hoax and the legacy media’s deceitful coverage of your presidency has intensified the issue.  At present, the Democratic media monopoly is becoming  an embarrassment, a system at odds with the preferences of the majority of Americans. Given that the media lacks professionalism and intersects with state influence—via the Democratic Party---the current system makes a mockery of Constitutional protection of freedom of the press. The current system is a state-granted monopoly that favors one party and is much like a totalitarian system. This is especially so of the stations owned by Comcast, TimeWarner, and Disney.    

There needs to be an antitrust action and a divestiture of airwave and cable networks from the Democrats so that airwave and cable control are wrested from Comcast and Disney and  fairly distributed among Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, and others in rough proportion to their numbers in the population.


Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Cc: Robert Iger, The Walt Disney Co.
Brian L. Roberts, Chairman, Comcast Corporation
Joseph J. Simons, Chairman, Federal Trade Commission

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Obama and the Jay Leno Firing: Will Comcast Comment?

Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2014 12:02 PM
Subject: Jay Leno Firing
Dear Comcast Media Department:

I write for a newspaper in Kingston, NY, The Lincoln Eagle, and the publisher is interested in a story about the link between Comcast’s contribution to the Obama campaign and the firm’s decision to fire Jay Leno following his Obama jokes.  I would be interested in a comment from Comcast. There has been coverage of this claim in several blogs ( http://politicaloutcast.com/2014/02/jay-leno-dumped-political-reasons-kind-regime-live/  , http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2014/02/17/tonight-show-writer-hosts-obama , and http://www.infowars.com/was-jay-leno-canned-by-nbc-for-criticizing-obama/ ). 
My day job is that of a college professor, but I am a libertarian.  I haven’t watched television news  or commercial television outside of the premium channels on demand since 2008. I have  been intending to terminate my cable service, but my wife has deterred me until now.  However, her brother, a physics professor, has terminated his.   In my case my motivation for wanting to terminate cable service is a combination of cost and politics.  I watch on demand because I can screen out the Progressive programming and the propaganda-cum-news. I consider American news to have the same content value that Pravda and Izvestia had in the Soviet Union. I haven’t watched television news, including NBC, since 2008. 
Amazon.com and Netflix have sizable on-demand portfolios, yet there is little reason for me to catch the latest episodes of the premium stations’ videos, so your business model and my $350-per-month bill to Time Warner are likely ephemeral.  I would rather watch Hitler’s Nuremburg rally than NBC news, and I don’t see a distinction between Obama and Hitler or between the Soviet news service and NBC.
I would appreciate your comments on the stories about the Jay Leno firing and any other points that may address my concerns about persistent bias and the laughable responsiveness of NBC to  Washington's totalitarians.
Thanks,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.