What Will Fox News Say About the Comcast-NBC Universal Merger?

Will Comcast's purchase of 51 percent of NBC Universal hand Fox News a heaping serving of red meat?

Fox News, as even the most casual viewer knows, has been locked in an on-air grudge match with MSNBC and its parent company, General Electric. The fighting got so dirty in August, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly went so far as to suggest that GE was supplying equipment for roadside bombs that are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Keep it classy, Fox News.)

If Philadelphia-based cable operator Comcast is able to absorb more than half of NBC Universal without too much intervention from the Obama administration, expect O'Reilly and his Fox News comrades to go DEFCON 1—especially since the Federal Communications Commission gave News Corporation such a headache when it acquired DirecTV in 2003.

In today's New York Times, Brian Stelter writes that a Comcast-NBC Universal deal "is likely to be the first major test of the Obama administration’s media regulators."

"Given its scope, analysts and public interest groups anticipate that the deal will undergo intense government scrutiny," Stelter continues. He cites Free Press, a nonpartisan group dedicated to media reform, that calls the merger "bad for public interest" and quotes Free Press executive director Josh Silver who asked, "Is the Obama administration going to make good on the pledges to support media diversity?"

Stelter reports that the FCC and the Department of Justice will have to review the merger. If the hurdles are anything less daunting, expect Fox News to accuse the Obama administration of favoritism towards NBC. Bill O'Reilly has accused the NBC and MSNBC of being "in the tank for Obama." Imagine what he'll say if the president looks the other way while the network's parent company moves forward with the Comcast deal.

And then there's the New York Post, which will probably photoshop Obama as cupid shooting an arrow through a peacock and a cable box with the headline "O's Sweetheart Deal," or something similarly subtle.

As far as that deal goes, Reuters' Jui Chakravorty Das reported that GE and Comcast may have agreed to a $30 billion valuation of NBC Universal, an agreement that "brings the parties one step closer to an agreement."

That value is also partially dependent on how well NBC Universal does—no simple matter, as the flagship network has been struggling on-air this past year.

The headline from an article by Mark Harris in this week's New York Magazine succinctly sums up the network's desperate situation: Will Somebody Please Save NBC?