The price to become a media mogul in America today is $45.2 billion. Last Thursday, cable giant Comcast tentatively bought over $45 billion worth of Time Warner Cable shares, increasing its number of customers by nearly 10 million to 30 million and controlling 30 percent of the television broadband market. To keep their market share around 30 percent (and avoid antitrust lawsuits), they will give up three million customers, most likely to Grand Junction’s cable provider, Charter Communications, whom Comcast outbid by about $7 billion in the Time Warner Cable takeover.

Some worry about the effects this could have on competition of cable prices. If history is any indicator, it is rare that consumers benefit over a cable giant, but Comcast and Time Warner Cable never existed in competing markets and still have to compete with the satellite companies. The sheer size of its consumer structure as they head to the bargaining table with the media companies will most likely be beneficial. TV producers and providers sit down and agree on a price in which the providers pay to stream to their customers. The producers often control these negotiations because they control programming, and consumers rarely stay with a provider that has blacked out channels (something TWC knows all to well when it lost this battle with CBS). Comcast now has 30 million potential viewers to bargain with and hopefully pass what they save on these deals to its customers.

For those 30 million viewers, things might not go so bad, but this isn’t something that will help the remaining 300 million Americans. According to Business Insider, 90 percent of American media is controlled by six corporations. Comcast is the man behind the curtain at NBC Universal after it acquired NBC in 2011. Since then, Comcast has had its hands in one of every five hours of produced TV and was the provider for 11 of the largest markets, including Chicago and Philadelphia. Because of its Time Warner Cable merger, Comcast is now the cable provider for New York and Los Angeles markets, and its reach of airtime expands as TWC has its hands in local news programs as well as some influence of ESPN.

Our government was founded on an idea that everyone should be allowed to speak and be heard—that’s how we keep everyone accountable. In a marketplace of ideas, if everyone has a voice, the best ones will be heard. When there is such an impending force of media dominance, it means less coverage and more control. American media is already a widely hated institution, and journalists are some of the most despised people in our country next to lawyers and the taxman.

Journalists are supposed to help the populace by diffusing information, but there has been a recent lack in an ability to do so when the iron fist of the media tycoons looms overhead. Thirty years ago, 50 corporations controlled the media. Today there is a dire need for less dominance of the airwaves when actions by people, the government and businesses are begging for attention that only a truly free media can cover.

brjthomp@mavs.coloradomesa.edu