But AOL and Time Warner are not guaranteeing anything. In a "Memorandum of Understanding" the two companies presented to the FCC and Congress in February, lip service was paid to their shared "commitments" to open access -- but no promises were made. And there was certainly no call for government regulation. The free market would sort it out.

Members of the congressional committee were less than impressed.

"Given that this document lacks both enforceability and specificity," chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chided the newly engaged moguls, "this committee remains to be convinced of its value beyond the boardroom and public relations office of AOL Time Warner."

And that was before the ABC blackout.

Of all the insurgents sniping at the merger, none stands out more clearly than Disney. "Normally the public interest groups are alone on these very critical issues about media ownership and diversity," allows the CME's Chester. "In the past couple of years what you've seen is a sort of silent agreement on the part of the big media companies: You don't spoil my monopoly, I won't spoil yours."

Disney has been assembling a media monopoly of its own, culminating in its merger with Capital Cities/ABC in 1995. Lost in much of the coverage of the ABC blackout was Disney's role in the debacle. Disney had been demanding that Time Warner take an unprecedented number of cable networks as part of its overall carriage deal. Thanks to the negative fallout from Time Warner's blackout, it got exactly what it wanted: a seven-year, $2 billion deal for a lot of programming of no proven value.

"Disney has not somehow been transformed to sweet guys with halos," says the Media Access Project's Andrew Schwartzman. "If you want to view this as Disney vs. Time Warner and a battle of two corporate cultures you can, but you're missing the point. This is really the cable monopoly vs. other content providers. Disney was willing to go much more public than a lot of people who are grousing privately."

A good deal of that public grousing came from Disney's top lobbyist, Preston Padden, a loquacious and well-heeled figure on the media legislation scene. Before the company reached its carriage agreement with Time Warner, Padden was traveling across the country, visiting local cable franchisers and providers and preaching against the merger.

"Disney made us aware of the issues out there and the authority we have to approve or disapprove the transfer," says Mary Morales, executive director of the Public Cable Television Authority. Representing a band of small cable providers in Southern California, the PCTA is one of many cable authorities that will get to vote on the transfer of Time Warner cable to AOL. The group had until June 11 to cast its lot, though it asked for a 30-day extension. AOL and Time Warner should be concerned.

Disney "encouraged us to scrutinize the transfer," says Morales, whose group is responsible to 80,000 subscribers. "They made themselves available to answer any of our questions."

Though Disney reached a carriage agreement with Time Warner, an agreement that made it seem as if the two titans had kissed and made up, anyone who thinks Disney will back off of its resistance to the AOL merger can't tell the forest (access to broadband) for the trees (Disney's immediate retransmission consent rights). Last week, Disney helped organize a powwow among the consumer advocate groups in Washington; in May it filed critical "Reply Comments" to the merger proposal with the FCC. (Padden pointedly declined to comment on his lobbying efforts or the merger's prospects.)

"Allowing any entity to have this level of control over this country's broadband future raises issues of profound public interest concerns," Disney declared in its reply.

And you thought it didn't care.

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