Just a handful of cable systems currently offer broadcasters' digital and high-definition feeds.
Despite the gains, only a handful of cable series and specials — "High School Musical," "WWE Raw" — draw audiences comparable to those of broadcast.
The new luxury tax merely makes the handful of cable-enriched teams considerably more blasé toward stalwarts like Tom Glavine, Edgardo Alfonzo and Mike Stanton, and totally cold-blooded toward overpriced millstones like Ordóñez.
For $7.99 a month, American viewers can upgrade to Hulu Plus, which gets them a bigger archive, a handful of cable TV shows, and access on mobile devices.Great stuff unless you're a media company.
"People may be watching more cable, but they are largely watching just a handful of cable networks and, therefore, consumers are being forced to pay for dozens of channels they hardly ever watch," Mr. Kimmelman said.
"It leaves consumers at the mercy of a handful of cable and phone providers that can give preferential treatment to the content they profit from," said Delara Derakhshani, policy counsel for Consumers Union.
Through a mix of golden parachutes, advisory fees and investment returns, a handful of cable executives, traders and bankers stand to reap enormous profits when and if the transaction closes.
The formation of the group signals a growing fear that the F.C.C., in an effort to spur investment in broadband Internet services, is ceding control to a handful of cable and phone companies over a network long seen as inherently immune to controlling influences.
The US is dominated by a handful of cable operators that have historically operated in a monopoly market.
(Other than these two, a handful of cable channels are also partners such as the History International, Hallmark, Hallmark Movie, Bloomberg, and the Tennis Channel).
