These traditional media want to merge to reduce costs, which allows them to provide more competition to these new media. I testified at FCC hearings, asking the Commissioners to bring FCC merger policy more in line with that of the Department of Justice and FTC.
The FTC merger enforcement data indicates that the proposed FCC rules would block all mergers that were investigated, but not challenged, by the FTC from 1996-2003. This rule would result in larger Type I errors (blocking mergers that benefit consumers), which may have significant effects on economic efficiency, especially in an industry such as the television industry with a rapidly changing competitive environment.
How the heck do they know?
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