Copps, McDowell Assess M&A, New Media, Spectrum Access
Ex-FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Robert McDowell clashed over media consolidation, and had differing views on how news and information accessibility has evolved. Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable should have been “dead upon arrival” when it arrived at the FCC, Copps said during an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators to be shown over the weekend. It’s “highly inimical to the interests of consumers and competition,” said Copps, special adviser to Common Cause. He bemoaned consolidation, saying it creates “huge companies that control distribution and content,” and that they're getting a hammerlock on the news and information infrastructure “that we as a democracy rely upon to govern ourselves. McDowell said Comcast/TWC and AT&T’s deal to buy DirecTV probably will be OK'd.
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Copps also pointed to his days at the FCC and meetings with CEOs who attempted to make their companies bigger. They would talk about efficiencies and economies to pass on to consumers, he said: “Have consumers seen any benefits on their cable bills from that consolidation?”
Without advocating for or against deals, McDowell said through an antitrust lens “you don’t have Comcast taking out a competitor.” AT&T/DirecTV is mainly driven by content, he said. In most markets, AT&T isn’t taking out a competitor, and it isn’t known as a pay-TV provider, he said. A lot of synergies can come out of that deal, said McDowell, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute.
McDowell questioned the FCC’s involvement in antitrust matters. “Should two government agencies be reviewing this type of merger?” he asked. “Other industries don’t have two agencies taking two bites at the apple.” The FCC can extract conditions that have nothing to do with the transaction, he said: “Is that good public policy or an unnecessary overlay of government bureaucracy and an overreach?"
FCC involvement in such reviews is aimed at considering the public interest, Copps said. The public interest standard of the FCC goes to noncommercial aspects, like the effects of a transaction on public safety, privacy and localism, he said. The Communications Act is pretty clear about the public interest, Copps added.
The former commissioners had different viewpoints on the fate of journalism and the impact of Internet access. McDowell said there has been an evolution in journalism: “We're seeing bottom-up, new-media driven journalism, and the definition of it is changing.” Consumers are benefiting as a result, he said. Women and minorities are having an easier time getting into the new-media realm of things, he said. McDowell said the adoption of smartphones is faster in minority communities than in suburban, affluent, predominantly white communities.
Copps said there hasn’t been ease of establishing new websites. It gets more and more difficult as consumers expect instantaneous transmission, he said: “It’s getting more expensive. … If you're going to have gatekeepers deciding what can go down there and what news you can see, and what sites you can see, and what advocacy cause you can see … that’s not an open Internet, and that’s not making maximum use."
Copps highlighted the upcoming spectrum auctions as a way to increase competition. There are opportunities to open that up to small businesses, entrepreneurs, minorities and women, he said. He also supported the adoption of more targeted spectrum policies, like spectrum screening caps, he said. “Policy got us into this mess, policy can get us out of this mess."
There’s plenty of competition, said McDowell. Instead of spectrum caps, government should look at getting more spectrum into the market, he said. New media exploded in a beneficial way “largely because they were deregulated or unregulated,” he said. “Trying to retrofit 80-year-old communications law onto them could be detrimental and slow things down."
Copps and McDowell agreed government should give up spectrum. That will happen when the White House and military-industrial stakeholders say it should be done, Copps said.