Stop media giantism: Nix Comcast acquisition of NBC

IT is a fine thing that General Electric has reached a deal to buy back the last 20 percent of NBC Universal from the French. The French should not own it. Neither should GE, which has enough on its plate — refrigerators, jet engines, compact fluorescents, etc. — without running a media empire.

NBC Universal should be independent.

Consider what it owns. Start with NBC Entertainment, whose offerings include "The Office" and "30 Rock." Add NBC News, NBC Local Media, which owns TV stations in the largest U.S. cities (in San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego on the West Coast), and NBC TV Network, which reaches almost every home in the country. NBC also owns Telemundo, which reaches big U.S. Spanish-speaking communities.

Add Universal Pictures, which makes movies, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, which sells DVDs, and interests in the several Universal Studios theme parks.

The public argument ought to be whether, in such a sensitive industry, even this is too much for one company. Instead, all of NBC Universal becomes a mere Park Place or Boardwalk deed to be consolidated by GE and resold to the happy buyer.

That would be Comcast, which already is America's biggest cable-TV and broadband Internet company.

This page said Monday that "if there ever was a corporate marriage federal regulators should block, it is Comcast Corp.'s proposition to buy NBC Universal." We say it again, and we hope others say it.

The consolidation in media is dangerous — to the economic interests of the public and to democracy itself. The trend toward media giantism should be stopped, and the place to begin is this proposed deal.