In amongst the mince pies and mulled wine you were all presumably keeping a close eye on the Office Of Fair Trading's investigations into the two big media mergers, yes? Well, on the off chance you weren't, read on. The OFT have ruled that both the proposed NTL/Telewest cable company merger and BSkyB's takeover of broadband supplier Easynet should get the go ahead without being referred to the Competition Commission.
The OFT said that given that NTL and Telewest currently operate in different areas geographically, the consumer will be no worse off if they merge. As for concerns that the merger would give Telewest's content company Flextech more power, the OFT said Flextech's position in the media space wasn't big enough for that to be a real problem.
As for BSkyB's Easynet takeover, the OFT said it recognised the benefit to consumers in one company offering TV, internet and telephone services. Regarding concerns that Sky might now block the supply of pay-TV content to rivals who operate in the internet space, the OFT ruled that BSkyB could and probably would do that anyway, with or without its own internet division, so those concerns are not relevant to the takeover.