How the FCC might stop the Comcast-NBC merger

Teeth are gnashing and swords are being drawn in response to the news that Comcast is poised to snarf down 51 percent of NBC Universal—the other 49 percent owned by General Electric. The deal would give Comcast, already the nation's biggest cable company and ISP, control over a huge swath of video content. "This is the most important media merger since Lucy married Desi," declared Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project. "The merger clearly threatens to transform video markets nationwide. Although the details of the deal have not yet been announced, I am strongly concerned about the market power enjoyed by a Comcast/NBC combination. No one entity should have control over such a large audience." The ensuing debate will push net neutrality questions "to the forefront," warned Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge. "Those who want to argue that AT&T, Verizon and, yes, Comcast, should be able to play favorites and have control over the content on the Internet will have an even larger barrier to surmount as the breadth, depth and economic might of the new media giant becomes apparent." They will also have to contend with noisy public opposition to the proposed merger. "Free Press will be rallying people across the country who are tired of mega-mergers being rubber stamped," the organization promised on Tuesday. "We will make sure that this time their voices can't be ignored." If there's a ring of confidence in these declarations, it's because the Comcast/NBC deal faces a very different regulatory environment than any recent mergers, notably the Sirius/XM or AT&T/BellSouth approvals. One wonders whether either of these marriages would have gotten past a Federal Communications Commission with Democratic rather than Republican majorities—not to mention the scrutiny of the Justice Department, which will be weighing in on this latest question, too.