And the "political influence " is big in all business today. Think about it, if cable didn't put big pressure on government on the DirectTV-Dish merger years ago we would not have DirectTV today. The customers did not complain about the merger, cable did and poured alot of money into influencing the outcome. And yes I know about the monopoly issue, but personal opinion is that without cable pushing for "no merger", Dish would have had DirectTV with all the locals already in place. Instead Dish built locals retransmission from scratch.
The 'customers' were complaining and the millions who's only options are Dish or DirecTV would get hosed if there were no more DirecTV. The only winners there would be the shareholders.