The National Coalition of African American Owned Media is not happy about the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger – and they made sure Barack Obama and the Federal Communications Commission know about it.
Threatening to sue the FCC for "not protecting African Americans in media,” as NCAAOM president Stanley Washington wrote in a full page ad the organization took out in the “Washington Post,” the group wants big changes to the merger before it will sign off on it.
The NCAAOM, whose ad slams Obama directly with words from the President's political past, say they will boycott Comcast-NBCU unless the company guarantees a no layoff policy and a lot of on-air minority presence.
"Despite the fact that Comcast, its executives and shareholders have built their company and personal wealth off the income of African Americans, Comcast Cable currently allocates none of its channel capacity, nor any of its $8-billion programming budget, to networks that are African American wholly owned and widely distributed to their nearly 23-million subscribers," says the group’s ad.
NCAAOM says any approval of the Comcast-NBC Universal deal, which the company has indicated it hopes to see get the green light by the end of the year, devote must compel the media giant to devote "10 percent of its channel capacity (50 channels), and 10 percent of its programming budget ($800-million) to networks that are African American wholly owned within six months of the merger’s regulatory approval."
This is not the first time NCAAOM, who count former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin as an advisor, have signaled their dislike of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger. They group called it “extremely insulting” earlier this summer when Comcast promised that they would add three or more minority owned independent cable channels by 2014, as well as reach out to minority groups and to spend millions more in advertising in media owned media over the next year.
