Budzinski/Wacker: Springer-ProSiebenSat.1-Merger
10
subject. As a consequence, the co-existence of competition policy and sectoral media
policy is quite typical. Sectoral policy is said to be superior in order to achieve objec-
tives, like diversity and the promotion of pluralism of views (supporting the democ-
ratic formation of public opinion) (Motta/Polo 1997). The competitive market equi-
librium may show a differentiation of contents, but this outcome does not necessarily
involve the representation of political views. Moreover persistent concentration,
driven by the high cost of the more attractive contents, remains a major limit to the
realisation of pluralism within the market. Due to lobbying motivations of media
owners, pluralism within a single media cannot be expected either. (Polo 2005). Di-
vergences and incompatibilities between economic efficiency oriented policies (for
instance, tolerating a higher degree of concentration in the name of higher efficiency)
and such that promote pluralism support a separation of powers (Motta/Polo 1997:
321).
In Germany, this is reflected by two different institutions and the laws involved in
media mergers. The Bundeskartellamt reviews the economic effects of media mergers
according to the general competition law (GWB). Besides, the Kommission zur Er-
mittlung der Konzentration im Medienbereich (KEK, sector-specific regulatory au-
thority commissioned to investigate concentration in broadcasting) examines, if plu-
ralism and diversity are threatened according to the requirements of the Rundfunk-
staatsvertrag (RStV, broadcast-specific regulatory framework). As this paper focuses
on the decision of the Bundeskartellamt, we will only analyse the economic effects of
the proposed merger on competition in the markets involved. This neither implies that
economic effects are more important than non-economic effects, nor that the prohibi-
tion by the KEK (2006) is less controversial.10 Our choice merely reflects the goal of
the paper to analyse the extent and quality of economic reasoning in a landmark deci-
sion on the Member-State level of the European Merger Control System.
3 A Review of the Prohibition Arguments of the German Cartel Office from an
Economic Perspective
The decision of the Bundeskartellamt is founded particularly on two arguments:
- the merger stabilizes and increases the collective dominance of P7S1 and
RTLGroup on the TV advertising market by enhancing incentives for coordinated
behaviour within the duopoly (section 3.1).
- the merger strengthens the already dominant position of AS on the reader and on
the advertising market for newspapers because of cross-media strategies, which
can profitably be employed by AS-P7S1 post-merger (section 3.2).
10 See for controversial assessments of the (quality of the) KEK-decision Lange (2005), Moschel
(2005), Bornemann (2006), Gounalakis/Zagouras (2006), Hain (2006), and Sacker (2006).