Time Warner and Comcast. Cox Cable, Bright House Networks and Cablevision. If these company names found familiar, it’s likely because one of them is the only game in your town for cable service.

As with other media sectors, the cable industry is dominated by a cartel of giant corporations. These massive firms use their outsized market power to keep subscription prices artificially high while providing poor customer service and blocking competitors from entering the marketplace.

This highly concentrated cable market is bad news for consumers, who benefit from the lower prices and better service that healthy competition among multiple providers makes possible.

At the FCC

Free Press is working to ensure that big cable doesn’t get any bigger through mergers and acquisitions. And we’re advocating with the FCC for public policies that will foster diverse cable ownership and create a more robust and competitive cable marketplace that serves the public interest.

The FCC is empowered to make cable ownership rules by establishing reasonable limits on the number of subscribers a cable operator may serve and limiting the number of channels an operator may devote to its affiliated programming networks.

Additionally, under the “70/70” finding, if a cable system with 36 or more channels is available to 70 percent of U.S. households and subscribed to by 70 percent of those households to which it is available, the FCC may enact “any additional rules necessary to provide diversity of information sources.” The FCC has not yet recognized that the 70/70 threshold has been reached.

In Congress

Click here to read a letter by Free Press and other public interest groups opposing H.R. 4307, the Consumer Freedom of Choice in Cable Act. This deeply flawed legislation seeks to repeal Section 612(g) of the Communications Act, a protective measure that gives the FCC additional authority to promote diversity of programming upon a finding of increased cable concentration.