Captive Audience Book Review
Book Review Instructions
As part of the course requirements, you are to write a review of the following book:
Susan Crawford. Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013, 368 pages. ISBN: 978030015312.
Book Update: Comcast announced on April 26, 2015 that it had dropped its plans to acquire
Time-Warner. Ms. Crawford’s book is widely credited with generating opposition to the proposed
merger among members of the public, politicians, and telecommunications regulators.
The book review should be a minimum of 6 pages and is to be typed (double spaced) and checked for
proper grammar and spelling. Here are some general instructions:
The introductory segment should describe the subject matter of the book. What are the
issues under examination in this book? What is the author trying to accomplish?
The review should present a coherent and succinct summary of the author’s main
arguments.
Be sure to explain the principle of “common carriage” and the historical importance of
common carriage obligations in transportation, local telephone, and utility services. Should
society impose common carriage obligations on monopolistic suppliers of broadband data
services? Why or why not? Summarize Crawford’s view on this question.
A key issue concerns the upstream vertical integration of broadband cable distribution
giants like Comcast into programming or content development. Is what sense was the
Comcast-NBC Universal merger a vertical merger? How is this merger anticompetitive, in
Crawford’s view?
After reading Crawford’s book, do you have any views on the proposed merger of Comcast
and Time Warner (Time Warner is currently the nation’s number 2 supplier of high speed
cable services, and also a large cable content provider)?
The final segment of the review should summarize your overall impression of the book. Do
you think this is an important book? Has your thinking changed after reading this book?
Would you recommend this book to others?
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