You can add a prominent media analyst to the chorus of critics of U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
“We believe Khan’s commentary lacked a fundamental understanding of the state of competition in the media sector today and the benefits the current market structure is yielding consumers,” LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield and his colleagues assert in a dissection of Khan’s comments during a recent podcast with The Ankler.
Citing multiple passages in the podcast where Khan offers viewpoints on the state of the media industry, including the quantity and quality of content, the LightShed team conclude the Khan-led FTC will “make future M&A difficult and that legacy media will need to fight for transactions in court.”
“If legacy media companies are prevented from consolidating, we believe they will be less capable of competing with tech giants and the end result will be less content for consumers at higher prices,” Greenfield said in a note Thursday.
LightShed’s criticisms add even more pressure on Khan, who vowed to take on Big Tech on anticompetitive grounds when she started more than two years ago.
Following recent losses to Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
and Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
over proposed acquisitions, the agency is in need of a win of some sort. Meanwhile, a years-long-rumored crackdown on Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
has yet to happen, even though the FTC is apparently close to filing a complaint, according to reports.
Read more: After loss against Meta, Lina Khan’s ability to rein in Big Tech with the FTC is being questioned
Expanding on the second-guessing of Khan is the perception that the agency’s approach is overly ambitious.
“LIna Khan needs to work on her aim,” The Information said in an analysis questioning her strategy. Exhibit A was a federal judge’s ruling against the FTC’s big to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc.
ATVI,
was “so definitive that it has to hurt the regulator’s credibility, at least when it comes to tech cases.”
The ruling suggests the author, is that “by going after all tech, all the time, Khan is overreaching and risks achieving nothing. The taxpayers whose money she is spending have a right to a more refined approach.”
In the ruling, the judge gave eight reasons the FTC failed to prove Microsoft had an incentive to withhold the hit game Call of Duty. “Despite the…production of nearly 1 million documents and 30 depositions, the FTC has not identified a single document which contradicts Microsoft’s publicly-stated commitment to make Call of Duty.”
Read more: FTC’s probe of OpenAI marks key moment in Khan’s push to rein in Big Tech
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