Free Republic

The FCC is seeking the public’s input on Nexstar Media Group and Tegna’s pending $6.2 billion merger. On Monday, the agency began accepting the two companies’ applications to transfer the licenses of Tegna’s 64 full-power television stations, one AM radio station, one FM radio station and other related FCC licenses to Nexstar. Per a public notice released by the agency, Nexstar has said that it would serve 54.5% of the national audience post-transaction and is seeking a waiver of the National Television Multiple Ownership Rule, which prohibits a single entity from owning television stations that, in the aggregate, reach more...

Joe Biden and the Democrats drove beef inflation to about six percent a year—more than twice the rate during the Trump years. There were many reasons why. Biden’s Green New Deal policies drove up the cost of fuel, feed, and fertilizer. His “eat soy” range war against ranchers restricted access to grazing lands. His drunken-sailor spending fueled historic food-price inflation. But all of these drivers were amplified — and exploited — by extreme market concentration in the beef industry. The Big Beef Four — Cargill, JBS (Brazil), Tyson Foods, and National Beef — control 80 to 85 percent of U.S....

What to know about the $82.7-billion Netflix-Warner Bros. deal that will reshape Hollywood Netflix and Warner Bros. announced early this morning a blockbuster $82.7-billion deal for the TV streamer to acquire Warner Bros. film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO. Here’s what we know so far. The takeover would give Netflix such beloved characters and franchises as Batman, Harry Potter and “Game of Thrones.” Netflix’s cash and stock transaction is valued at about $27.75 per Warner Bros. Discovery share. Netflix will take on another $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt. Warner’s cable channels, including CNN, TNT and HGTV, are...

The Federal Communications Commission currently caps an entity from reaching more than 39% of U.S. TV households, but the federal agency is considering changing that rule. The longstanding federal regulation will likely be the topic of a Dec. 17 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, where all three FCC commissioners are set to testify. The federal rule has divided Republican leaders. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has considered modifying the federal agency’s cap on commercial broadcasters in the past. “Over the decades, as the media landscape has evolved, the Commission has revisited these rules to account for...

Until Bill Belichick makes his college football debut in the Sept. 1 opener against TCU, Mack Brown remains the last coach to lead North Carolina on the field in a regular-season game. The two-time Tar Heels head man said he sees differences in his old program in the short time he has been away, most notably with its investment, and that those changes will help Belichick hit the ground running in Year 1. Belichick's five-year, $50 million deal makes him one of the 10 highest-paid coaches in college football. In contrast, Brown's final contract at UNC paid him $5 million...

Union Pacific wants to buy Norfolk Southern in a $85 billion deal that would create the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S, and potentially trigger a final wave of rail mergers across the country. The proposed merger, announced Tuesday, would marry Union Pacific’s vast rail network in the West with Norfolk’s rails that snake across the Eastern United States. The combined railroad would include more than 50,000 miles of track in 43 states with connections to major ports on both coasts. The nation was first linked by rail in 1869, when a golden railroad spike was driven in Utah to...

Chinese price manipulation has taken its toll on the U.S. economy Rare earth metals are an increasingly integral part of everything from automobiles to television sets.  But the precious metals are tightly controlled by China, with an excess of 95 percent of current suplly coming from Chinese-owned mines and refineries.  The degree of control has allowed China to manipulate prices, cutting back on demand to sell less material for the same amount of profit, any businessperson's dream. I. New Private-Public Partnership Sets Aim on Chinese Mineral Hegemony The problem is that it takes several years or more to bring rare...

Today the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice prevailed in its second monopolization case against Google. In United States et al. v. Google, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that Google violated antitrust law by monopolizing open-web digital advertising markets. According to the Court, Google “harmed Google’s publishing customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web.” “This is a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “This Department of Justice will continue taking bold legal action...

An FTC lawsuit accuses the agriculture machinery giant of illegal repair restrictions that allegedly inflate costs and deny farmers timely equipment fixes. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with attorneys general from Illinois and Minnesota, filed a lawsuit against John Deere manufacturer Deere and Company on Wednesday, Jan. 15, charging the agriculture machinery giant with engaging in practices that allegedly force farmers to rely on its authorized dealers for critical equipment repairs. According to the FTC’s complaint, these alleged tactics have inflated costs for American farmers and deprived them of the ability to quickly fix the tractors and combines they...

There’s a video going mega-viral on social media. It features Linda Resnick, a member of a billionaire family deeply entrenched in California’s water business. As a matter of fact, they control quite a bit of the state’s water supply. With California facing severe water shortages—especially as fires rage through the city—people are starting to ask a lot of questions, and rightfully so. ... This is billionaire Lynda Resnick, her family owns 60-75% of the water in California.. – Her family donates HUGE amounts of money to Democrats. – She donated to stop Gavin Newsom’s recall. – They use over 150...

Microsoft's unchecked monopolistic practices and deep ties to the Censorship Industrial Complex demand a conservative-led investigation to safeguard free markets and free speech. It’s no secret that many of the tech giants operate as monopolies, and one of the worst offenders is Microsoft. The Federal Trade Commission recently launched an antitrust investigation against Bill Gates’s creation, alleging it works unfairly to stifle competition and control various sectors of the tech market. The FTC wants to inquire into how Microsoft offers its cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity products. The agency is particularly concerned with the tech giant’s bundling services that...

NYPD officers discovered stacks of Monopoly money in the backpack of the suspect accused of shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare during a high-profile conference in Manhattan. Authorities are still piecing together the motive behind the attack, but the peculiar find has raised more questions than answers. As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier, the New York Police Department discovered a backpack in Central Park believed to belong to the suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Now, authorities have revealed the contents inside the backpack. According to NYPD officials, a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and Monopoly money were found inside...

Key Points The Department of Justice late Tuesday indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy. The DOJ said it was “considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search.” The judge has yet to decide on the remedies, and Google will likely appeal, drawing out the process potentially for years. ==================================================================== The Department of Justice late Tuesday made recommendations for Google’s search engine business practices, indicating that it was considering a possible breakup of the tech giant as an antitrust...

As the US government weighs its options following a landmark “monopolist” ruling against Google last week, online publications increasingly face a bleak future. (And this time, it’s not just because of severely diminished ad revenue.) Bloomberg reports that their choice now boils down to allowing Google to use their published content to produce inline AI-generated search “answers” or losing visibility in the company’s search engine. The crux of the problem lies in the Googlebot, the crawler that scours and indexes the live web to produce the results you see when you enter search terms. If publishers block Google from using...

LONGBOAT KEY, Fla., Aug. 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rumble (NASDAQ:RUM), the video-sharing platform and cloud services provider, announced that it has joined the social media platform X to file antitrust lawsuits alleging a conspiracy to withhold advertising revenue from Rumble and other digital media platforms. In its filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Rumble named as defendants the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), as well as the advertising agency WPP and its subsidiary GroupM Worldwide.

X on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a coalition of major advertisers, claiming that it had violated antitrust laws by coordinating with brands to dissuade them from spending money on the social media platform. The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, claims that the coalition, known as GARM, “conspired” with leading brands, including CVS, Unilever and the Danish energy company Ørsted to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” that were owed to X, then known as Twitter, in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company in 2022....

To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott. This behavior is a stain on a great industry, and cannot be allowed to continue. That is why, today, X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever. This is not a decision we took lightly, but it is a direct consequence of their actions.

"Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in his 277-page ruling. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and several dozen state attorneys general had sued Google, accusing the company of paying billions of dollars to Apple, Samsung and other companies to make Google the default search provider on smartphones and web browsers. "This victory against Google is an historic win for the American people," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "No company—no matter how large or...

A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies. The highly anticipated decision issued by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes nearly a year after the start of a trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google in the country’s biggest antitrust showdown in a quarter century. After reviewing reams of evidence that included testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft and Apple during last year’s 10-week trial, Mehta...

Google has violated US antitrust law with its search business, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing the tech giant a staggering court defeat with the potential to reshape how millions of Americans get information online and to upend decades of dominance. “After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” The decision by the US District Court for the...