It looks like Comcast will buy NBC now, but this caught my eye:
Other potential bidders have surfaced, including the News Corporation. But talks between G.E. and Comcast have advanced far enough that a deal with another company was unlikely, people briefed on the matter said.
It really is no wonder all the network “journalists” are so eager to defend Fox News.
(via Atrios)
Just Some Fuckhead
Just trying to beat Stuck.
Mark S.
Do antitrust laws still exist?
Bun
I’m confused, where will this leave the Sheinhardt Wig Company in the new corporate structure?
MikeJ
They will deliver a wig to you some time between 8 am tomorrow and 9pm March 17th, 2068.
freelancer
“Are you suggesting that she and Eric are influenced by money?”
“No, they work for free. And you are a volunteer Executive Producer.”
Chad N Freude
Speaking of Murdoch’s minions, I had the following e-mail exchange with Laura Sunders of the WSJ.
I actually got a response (which surprised me):
I don’t know if she’s being disingenuous, but I find it hard to believe that she was “was not aware of the extreme politicization of the term.” To me, it’s extreme politicization on its face. Anyway, it was nice of her to send a gracious response. I hope that isn’t a firing offense at the WSJ.
(In case the blockquote workaround fails, everything through her signature is quoted.)
Zifnab
@Mark S.: Anti-what?
So, here’s a fun joke. Some of the first anti-trust lawsuits in the United States were aimed at unions. It wasn’t until Teddy Roosevelt that anti-trust was used aggressively against actual corporations. :-p
Still, I can’t wait to hear about all the companies we get to bail out next because they are “Too Big To Fail”.
BFR
I, for one, can’t wait to see the new and improved reporting on net neutrality laws.
Brachiator
And so, where is the money coming from to finance this deal? How is it that the credit markets are still tight, and CIT, which lends to small businesses, is going bankrupt, and yet big deals can still be put together?
Earlier, there was a news story that Comcast was trying to acquire a controlling interest in Hulu.
Also, NBC owns Spanish language network, Telemundo.
Anti-trust is weak tea to all the stuff going on behind this deal.
Chad N Freude
@BFR: Comcast is only trying to enhance Consumer Choice (a widely applied mantra these days, invariably synonymous with “We want to control what consumers can choose”) by claiming the right to exclude choices that consumers wouldn’t want.
I don’t know what the corporate relationships are, but how might this affect MSNBC? I would hate to see Rachel Maddow tossed out to wind up in a women’s shelter.
Ash Can
@Mark S.: I dunno, ask that stooge Reagan.
geg6
Yup, that deregulation of the airwaves has worked out so well. All that competition is just amazing to behold. Mother fucking Ronald fucking Reagan, that zombie mother fucker, strikes again. Is there nothing this guy didn’t start down the road to oblivion?
Mark S.
@Zifnab:
Wow, I didn’t know that.
General Winfield Stuck
It would all make sense if you weren’t such a point head libtard.
Chad N Freude
@geg6:
Umm … Russia?
MattR
@Zifnab: I am voting for some version of “too big to fail” during regulatory hearings. Except they will argue that NBC is so large that the only companies with the ability to purchase it would all have the same regulatory issues.
@Brachiator: About the only good news in all that is that I would imagine that the other cable companies and DirecTV are going to be fighting this kind of consolidation tooth and nail.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind the government spending some money to bail out Universal/NBC if it leads to NBC being spun off as an independent public company.
ellaesther
Look DougJ, you “what ellaesther said“-ed me last week, and I may or may not have called out to my husband in another room to tell him at the time, and I may or may not still be grinning from the geeky thrill. So I hesitate to disagree and all.
But: As a journalist (note sincerity as expressed by a lack of airquotes), I actually understand what the non-Fox people were doing there. People who work in the same field have a certain loyalty to each other, and that’s what the “we won’t come if they can’t come” was all about. A lot of TV journalists don’t do a very good job, I will grant you that, but I would have honestly thought less of them if they hadn’t done that. And I happen to hate Fox, and agree with the President!
Sigh. I have a feeling that you won’t “what ellaesther said” me today….
ellaesther
@Chad N Freude: Nah, the Soviet Union was well on the road to falling apart before he even came on the scene.
geg6
Chad N Freude @15: LOL! Yes, that’s true. Okay, that’s ONE thing.
Chad N Freude
@General Winfield Stuck: @ellaesther: Not the Soviet Union. Russia!
BFR
@Chad N Freude
If you liked “Morning Joe” then you’re going to love “Morning, Noon and Night Joe.”
Aunt Moe
I’m out of outrage. I think this is what is meant by ending ‘with a whimper, not a bang.’
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: Sorry. Not directed to His Generalship. Unreliable mouse manipulation.
inkadu
Damnit. I have even LESS to say on this subject than gay rights.
I might as well quit for tonight and enjoy Hulu while I can.
Dreggas
Limbaugh says Scozzafava guilty of beastiality
stay classy
slag
@freelancer: Now I’ve got to see that movie.
Chad N Freude
@Dreggas: I shouldn’t say this, because Limbaugh’s lack of anything remotely resembling human sensibility is serious, and I will feel unclean, but …
Is this an example of polyamory?
freelancer
@slag:
It’s one of my favs.
Lowell Bergman (The guy Pacino is playing) is now a correspondent for Frontline.
bago
OT, but my costume made wonkette. woot!
Just Some Fuckhead
Chris Matthews is particularly retarded this evening.
Chad N Freude
@Just Some Fuckhead: How can you tell?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Chad N Freude: He keeps giggling at nothing.
Chad N Freude
@Just Some Fuckhead: And this is different from what?
KRK
Coincidentally, I just watched a skit of Fry & Laurie slagging on good ol’ Rupert from back in ’95: “It’s a Soaraway Life.”
ellaesther
@bago: It’s hard for me to tell you just how cool I find that.
Steeplejack
@Bun:
Sheinhardt Wig?! Dude, the smart money has all moved to U.S. Hay. Get with the times.
Steeplejack
@Chad N Freude:
I buy her explanation. Not everyone is a Web/blog hound, and my impression is that this issue has been much bigger on the Intertubes than in the print medium. And it’s probably true that in the professional circles (legal/legislative) she moved in the term “death taxes” was long a handy shorthand before it got co-opted by the
wingnutWalton extremists.And kudos to her for writing you a serious reply that obviously required a little thought.
Chad N Freude
@Steeplejack:
I agree, I thought it was gracious. And, to her credit, she separates herself from “right wingers”.
Jen R
So long Hulu, it was nice knowing you.
J. Michael Neal
Not probably true. Definitely true, and for exactly the reason she lays out. You need to have some term that encompasses both estate and inheritance taxes, and it’s tough to think of something else that would really fit.
Brachiator
@MattR:
If the past is any indication, other cable companies and DirecTV will be looking to make their own deals.
NBC Universal doesn’t need a bailout. I have no idea how government money would help anything as far as this goes.
Chad N Freude
@J. Michael Neal: It may be difficult to find another shorthand term for estate and inheritance taxes — I admit I haven’t thought of one yet, but “death taxes” is emotionally loaded and effectively screams at the anti-tax right “Take me, Howard Roark”. They could have stayed with “estate and inheritance” and found some other way to keep the word count down.
Chad N Freude
@Brachiator: I think this is simply a way for Universal to fix the result of “We can conglomerate all these disparate businesses and synergize our way to infinite wealth except it doesn’t work that way.”
Brachiator
@Chad N Freude:
I know what the estate tax is, but I don’t know what the inheritance tax is supposed to be, at the federal level.
But death tax is catchy because it falsely implies that since everybody will die one day, every person who dies has to pay some tax for the privilege.
I don’t see much for Universal in this deal. I see tremendous prospects for vertical integration by Comcast, and an attempt to control future potential revenue streams, such as video on demand via the InterTubes.
And as I asked earlier, I would really like to see the financing behind this deal.
Jack
Lucy Parsons was a bit of a firebrand, but I imagine she’d have something appropriate to say about this deal, and our times.
I won’t post her most incendiary and infamous declaration, what with the NSA chomping away at every hint and allegation of bad thought.
But, here’s a nugget to ponder:
“Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth.”
Or this:
“If, in the present chaotic and shameful struggle for existence, when organized society offers a premium on greed, cruelty, and deceit, men can be found who stand aloof and almost alone in their determination to work for good rather than gold, who suffer want and persecution rather than desert principle, who can bravely walk to the scaffold for the good they can do humanity, what may we expect from men when freed from the grinding necessity of selling the better part of themselves for bread?”
What does this have to do with Murdoch or Comcast acquiring NBC?
I don’t know.
Sometimes, though, when the feudalists who run the US economy cobble together another merger or acquisition which further erodes the economic foundations of liberty, I turn to Lucy or Red Emma or Mary Harris Jones, and remember that the proles in the US was not always so inclined towards mere whimbling…
Jack
argh – ‘were not so inclined’