Yes, the Comcast-Time Warner deal collapsed, but Big Cable still has plenty of friends in Washington

[Commentary] I’ve maintained since the day the proposed Comcast-Time Warner deal was announced that combining America’s two largest cable providers would have been an anti-competitive, anti-consumer and anti-democracy. Despite my concerns, most industry watchers anticipated the Federal Communications Commission would allow the merger. Why? Because too often, Big Cable and Big Telecom call their own shots. They donate heavily to politicians in both parties, and the FCC has historically done their bidding. Now, consumers and their allies in a coalition of reform organizations are largely responsible for putting the brakes on the Comcast-TWC deal. They’ve demonstrated that even in this era when big money and powerful corporations wield such outrageous power, genuine grassroots concern can still win out. It turns out that everyday citizens do care about communications policy and can still make good things happen. I wish we could say the same about the majority in Congress.

Unfortunately, Capitol Hill is awash with lawmakers who have built their careers around fealty to corporate interests and irrational antipathy to those charged with protecting the public interest. Just as the FCC -- often rightly charged in the past with being captured by the businesses it’s supposed to regulate -- seems at long last to be getting serious about its public interest responsibilities, many in Congress seem disconnected from their constituents and in thrall of their Big Cable and Big Telecom benefactors. There’s a serious disconnect between too many members of Congress and the folks they’re supposed to be representing. Comcast’s withdrawal of the merger plan is wonderful news for consumers concerned about the abysmal state of competition and customer service in cable and broadband, and for citizens who have had enough of gatekeeping and consolidation in the communications infrastructure on which our civic dialogue and our democracy so heavily depend. Too bad too many in Congress are still so in thrall to the status quo.

[Michael Copps is a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. He serves as the special adviser to the Media & Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause and is a contributor the Benton Foundation's Digital Beat Blog]