Comcast: NBCU Deal Would Be $290M Net Gain For Consumers

Company responds to alleged $2.4 billion cost in ACA study

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/16/2010 2:18:54 PM

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Comcast says its proposed deal will result in $290 million worth of consumer benefits, not the $2.4 billion cost to consumers alleged in a study proffered by the American Cable Association.

That came in Comcast's response Monday at the FCC to the ACA study by former FCC economist William Rogerson.

Calling the Rogerson study misleading, Comcast said its own researchers, Mark Israel and Michael Katz, demonstrated the $290 million savings and that Rogerson analysis "should be given no weight."

They argue that Rogerson understates the deal's cost savings, ignores data and provides no basis for the conditions ACA is proposing on the deal.

Israel and Katz say that Rogerson provides no credible evidence of any horizontal competitive harms, that the pricing models he uses are unsubstantiated, that some of his cost-savings claims are "false and misleading," and that even using Rogerson's methods of computing net consumer benefit, the result would be $290 million in the plus column.

Comcast's filing was just the latest volley in what has been a series of papers from both sides filed at the FCC and taking aim at their respective calculations of merger impacts.

Responding to Comcast's response to its study, ACA President Matthew Polka said Tuesday in a statement: "After almost a year of first producing and then revising its economic arguments to justify government approval of this transaction, Comcast is surprising no one by again revising its arguments for why this deal is not harmful to the American consumer."

The FCC and Justice are widely believed to be winding down their review of the deal.