Hollywood Media Expose - The Comcast Monopoly

Let’s set the scene as follows: anyone of us enters the supermarket; we look at our “shopping list” which contains the following items – bread, milk, lettuce, yogurt and baby food.  Up and down the aisles we go accumulating our items and we see a deal on soda pop and grab some unauthorized cookies and head to the checkout counter.  The conveyor belt whisks them past the scanner; we’re ready to pay the $18.56 and the checkout clerk hands us a list of approved “food packages” and, based on our selections, we must buy the preferred package which includes 22 other items at a total cost of $95.41.

What just happened?  Well, it’s the pay for TV signal/programs approach to market selection applied to the local grocery store.  We tried to buy the items on our list; those items we choose but we were informed, rather rudely, that we can get what we want as long as we also buy the things that they insist we buy.  Actually we have no choice – we either take their package or we go without. 

Who would possibly build a business based on a business model that would follow this script?  Well, besides the government that makes you buy things you may neither need nor want – GSA outings in Las Vegas; lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; thousands of secret service personnel checking out the security risks in distant nightclubs and hotels and the largest number of overpaid, over benefited, over pensioned bureaucrats in the entire history of the world -- only the Hollywood media could develop a script like this and jam it down our throats.  Only the Hollywood media could demand, with the assistance of government at all levels – your town, your village, your city, your county, your state, and your country, that to get out of their store you buy their package to get what you want.  Can they do this on their own?  Of course not.  They buy off the governments at all levels and then they can get away with it legally.  Who is this outfit of which we speak?  The number one Hollywood media player of all time –

Brought to you by your local, state and federal politicians and bureaucrats – you know the ones you vote for and hire to look out for you.  They even make you pay to get the over the air channels that exist in the sky over your home.  And they run the business according to their rules; their concept of “service” levels; their fee schedule; their equipment charges and they can increase the fees and charges whenever they choose and they choose to do so at will.

If you cannot imagine the scene above, going into a grocery store and being forced, compelled to buy that which you neither need nor want; you must live somewhere else because many American homes are wired to COMCAST* and they make you buy things you never see; never watch; never even have a particle of interest in.  And, guess what?  Those things you pay Comcast for?  They are mostly advertising sponsored programs so you get to pay Comcast for it once and you get to pay for the advertised products twice and, we have this tinkling, inkling that you also get to pay a little premium on the top to the governments that make this Comcast cabal possible.  Just check your bill.

Here is a Wikipedia quote pertinent to this topic – “Comcast spends millions of dollars annually on government relationships. Comcast employs the spouses, sons and daughters of mayors, councilmen, commissioners, and other officials to assure its continued preferred market allocations.

Comcast occasionally lobbies against "a la carte” bills that would give consumers the option to purchase individual channels rather than a broad tier of programming.”

There is a simple solution to this situation.  It does involve government actually working for you.  Here is how it would work.  The signal coming into your home, whether it is for TV programming or Internet or music or late night risqué theatrical performances – is a utility.  Delivered and controlled as a utility monopoly; just as is the natural gas and electricity you now receive.  The programming, not the signal that carries it which we are saying should be a regulated utility, is wide open – the choices are limited only by the signal capacity which you purchase as a utility and your ability to watch/listen and pay.  You pay for what you select to watch or listen to.  The technology exists to manage this system.

Comcast is a monopoly that only exists because of the corrupt arrangements it has created with the government officials you elect to look out for you.  If we’ve said it once we’ve implied it a hundred times – monopolies are bureaucracies and bureaucracies are monopolies. They are inefficient and they are very costly.  You get to deal with two of the biggest ever – the US government and Comcast.   Your state and local governments are running strong third and fourth positions.  You can write them and ask for relief.  That will not work.  You need to stop funding bureaucracies and monopolies regardless of what package deal they are selling.

* Don’t be fooled by the name change to Xfinity.  It is their weak attempt to discard a name infamous for horrible service and outrageous pricing.