Congress should say no to Comcast/NBC merger

NO doubt there are drawbacks to choosing a U.S. senator from among former players on "Saturday Night Live." Last week Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., made an asset of his former life as a TV comic. He stared down the president of NBC Universal and announced that he did not believe the company's promises. Franken had learned on the job not to believe them.

A $37 billion purchase does create an incentive for the players to make whatever promises about competition and innovation that are necessary to push it through. That is so for Comcast, which is doing the buying, and for NBC Universal, which is being bought.

And this means the promises made last week in the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives are tainted. No one should take them at face value.

Here is the core issue. Cable is the pipe that delivers television programs to people's homes. Comcast owns the cable — more of it than any other U.S. company. NBC Universal owns programs — a huge amount. The question is whether it is good for the American people that the company that owns the cable also owns a great mountain of exclusive content.

The problem, again, is incentives. Such a company will favor its own content over that of independent TV producers. It will do this naturally. Its profit-and-loss statement will command it.

Its executives will say what they did say last week — that earning more money gives it the ability to invest in innovative programming. The ability — yes. But history suggests that new things, the really imaginative and pathbreaking things, don't often come from giant organizations. And that is why it's not smart to let the giants get too big.

In this case, the pathbreaking thing may be delivery of video on demand through the Internet. Netflix is offering that, and warns that the Comcast-NBC Universal deal will squeeze it out. And that will be just the first thing.

Congress should not be afraid to say a simple "no" to the Comcast-NBC Universal proposal. It is a bad idea, and it needs to fail.