The FCC, as of this week, has officially approved the proposed "merger" of Comcast with NBC/Universal.
All who care about the survival of real journalism in this country now have our last chance to back-stop this thing as it now goes to the DOJ for review.
I'll admit it right from the start of this diary: I'm a big fan of Countdown with Keith Olbermann as well as The Rachel Maddow Show. They are a nightly fixture at my house. Importantly, however, this is not just due to all the Oddball videos, or Moments of Geek, or all the pretty colors, or even Keith & Rachel's charm & good humor — though all of the above (& more) are certainly great side-benefits. Keith's Countdown has been one of the last bastions of informed opinion & passionately progressive voices on American TV. Rachel has given the cable punditocracy a well-needed intelligence injection, teaching us once again what solid journalism & unrelentingly-tough, substance-based interviews look like.
That kind of nightly journalism, along with the many other national treasures on MSNBC, is just the sort of thing that the Comcast "merger" (read: take over half & toss the rest a debt-anvil) now threatens like a dagger at the heart.
Case in point: Remember TechTV? It was a rare combination of techie daytime & afternoon shows (Call For Help, Screensavers, & many others), as well as some rarely-to-never-seen-on-basic-cable entertainment shows — & it all got chopped to pieces in a matter of weeks when Comcast took over, eliminating the channel & axing nearly all personnel (except for 1 or 2 who they shunted over to their lamer-gamer premium channel, G4).
So... What now? How will we do our part to protect not only MSNBC (with my 2 main non-Discovery-LLC reasons for watching TV), but a huge amount of the media landscape from being either looted & trashed, or else converted to a trash-TV format, with the best journalists on TV relegated to satellite radio or just plain unemployed? How, in short, can we stop this onerous deal now? The DOJ still has to review this thing; the best I can think of right now is getting our best legal eagles & public advocacy arguers to get Eric Holder's attention on this.
Thoughts? Rants? I'm open to suggestions.