[Biblebelter]

Nice rant. It demonstrates that you’re completely emotion based on this and desperate to ignore all the most simple logic, but it’s a nice rant. Here’s the reality: there is never anything wrong with using one product to help you sell another. Food companies put coupons for products that aren’t selling well in the packaging for products that are. Video game consoles get sold at a loss so there’s a market for the video games, which the console companies produce some of and get fee for the rest. And Discovery the company uses the popularity of Discovery the network to help them sell Science the network no one watches. There’s nothing wrong with this, there never has been anything wrong with this, and there never will be anything wrong with this. And if you don’t like it don’t get cable, there’s an easy way out of the game and lots of fun things to do without TV.

This is a conservative forum. I think that I offered a conservative point of view. I believe in free markets and competition. In the end technologies develop that trump prevailing business models. Media barons like Hearst had their day. Land line phone companies had their day. The present status quo will be replaced by something else, I am sure. But they are still racketeering.

[discostu]

The problem with what you put forth is that you want Congress to intervene, that’s not conservative, that’s more big government. The right solution, the one that will actually work, the one that’s conservative, is the one you’ve finally arrived at: let the free market handle it. Time-Warner has already proven that conglomerate media can get oversized and be counter productive.

But they’re not racketeers, that’s pure emotion driven hyperbole. They’re people using a perfectly legitimate business model that’s used by every other multi-faceted company on the planet. Using the successful parts of the business to help sell the not yet (or not as) successful parts is BUS101, not racketeering.