Comcast is ruining Cheap Cable bundles, because Comcast

by John Smith Technician

You might be surprised after knowing that Comcast, the largest Broadcasting and Cable Television Company is doing something bad. According to a report by the American Cable Association, an organization representing 800 small cable companies nationwide, Comcast has been using its ownership of “must-have” programming, like NBC regional Sports channels, to quash the spread of so-called “skinny” cable bundles from other cable companies. You can also say that, the company is in charge of misusing its position as a content owner to finish the competition in the home cable market.

That is obviously sounding like the kind of grossly anti-competitive behavior that controllers should be strongly cracking down on, but if you still hoping that, you might be new here. The American Cable Association make the comments to give the answer to an FCC request for comments on the 19th “Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming.”

According to this association, Comcast is compelling small scale cable companies to pack NBC Sports into any cable package that crosses 15%+ of a customers’ user base. Sports channel are mostly the expensive part of a cable bundle, so the current trend of providing “skinny” cable that excludes sports is become famous. Obviously, the increase the popularity of skinny bundles is not good for the company’s bottom line as it is resulting in a killing selling sports channel to the other cable companies through NBC Universal.

ACA President and CEO, Matthew M. Polka said in a statement that most of the consumers that are looking out for the big cable bundle in return of a less expensive alternative are choosing a bundle that incorporates only the basic cable tier (mainly local TV stations) along with the broadband internet access and then depending on over-the-top video services to receive authorization to a more limited amount of cable programming specifically tailored to meet their particular interest.

It appears that this Broadcasting and Cable Television Company is standing in the way of ACA members that wish to support their customers in escaping the burdens of the huge and expensive expanded basic bundles of channels, while at the same time forcefully selling a bundle of networks is more or less similar to the broadcast basic tier to its own customers through its new “Instant TV Service.

Considering the ACA’s comments at face value, this appears like same the type of anti-competitive practices users were worried about when Comcast took complete control of NBC Universal, four years back. Coming to the point, it is going to get worse if AT&T finishes its acquisition of Time Warner Inc. At that stage, you will have one more big cable company with control over “key programming like TNS, CNN, TNT and HBO.

There is almost no way that cord-cutting can really make a change, if all the content is monitored by cable companies that are making a killing off their present price strategy. “Minimum penetration policies” that is forcing cable companies to incorporate the most attractive channels in the bulk of their bundles, let Comcast and the like indirectly decide prices for cable companies all across the nation. This will automatically prevent smaller cable companies from coming in and undercutting Comcast’s own cable business. This is a circle, means as long as the biggest cable companies are also the biggest content owners, there’s no end.

Comcast Billing Support