How do you figure? Under my proposed rule, the people who own it now are free to meaningfully split it off from Comcast and operate it as a content production company, probably with Comcast as a customer. No national ownership involved at all.
I'm certainly talking about restricting what we allow privileged capital structures to do.
No, under your proposed rule NBCUniversal would be forced to share the content it spends millions of dollars creating for free with its competitors because of a government mandate. This isn't divesture, this is nationalization.
You're forcing a company's investments into the public's hands.
They shouldn't have to, there's nothing life-critical about watching TV shows that the government needs to split this company up, or get any more involved.
So what if you can't watch Two Broke Girls if you don't have Comcast? Two Broke Girls is not critical for a happy, fulfilling life.
> So what if you can't watch Two Broke Girls if you don't have Comcast? Two Broke Girls is not critical for a happy, fulfilling life.
Nor should Comcast be able to produce Two Broke Girls (actually I think that's CBS but whatever) in an environment where they are protected from competition. But they are. That's what the OP is getting at - Comcast makes money from the privileged position. Nothing to do with the programming on that channel.
They are in absolutely no way protected from competition. Their competition includes going outside, reading a book, etc. Not to mention the plenty of other content producers out there.
You're worried they'll lock DreamWorks/Universal films/NBC TV shows to Comcast customers only, because of their position as an ISP. We can agree, that's bad, if they do that, and if they do end up trying that, then I understand action (with some caveats, I am in favor of net neutrality, but I think there's a balance between what the government helped them build and what they built themselves).
But they haven't done that yet. As long as they don't do it, I think regulation is premature.
