Recently Comcast and Universal announced plans to merge their two houses.  Every time I hear about two large communications corporations merging I remember what my Communication 101 professor said about such things, “Nothing good can come of this.”

What’s so bad about it? Consider that the entertainment behemoth would control the content and the means to distribute that content. In other words, they control the shows and how those shows get to your television.  Think such a thing couldn’t happen? It already has.  This year if you wanted to see the show Friday Night Lights, you needed a DirectTV subscription. If you didn’t have one, well maybe you can buy the DVD in 2010.

Should this merger go through, I worry for the growing trend of on-demand over-the-internet providers like Hulu.  They answered a decades-old plea from media consumers—an a la carte cable system.  Only the pluck and grit of a start-up can do that.  However, based on recent examples of large corporate mergers, Comcast-Universal may not even get the chance to execute anything. Even if they pass regulation they have a steep hill to climb—one that is littered with the wrecks of AOL-Time Warner and Vivendi-Universal.  So watch this development with a skeptical eye.

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