Not only does LittleBigPlanet 2 come out today, but the FCC approved the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. Will the two companies use their combined powers for good and not evil? A healthy skepticism may be in order.

The merger cleared the FCC with a 4-1 a few moments ago. The merger was initially announced in late 2009, but its approval was held up because the FCC wanted to ensure that the merger wouldn’t wreak havoc with things like consumer choice when it comes to content consumption.

The Free Press, the watchdog group that criticized the FCC for passing only a “lite” form of Net Neutrality, has similar misgivings with regard to the merger.

Today’s decision by the FCC represents a failure of the agency to live up to its own public interest mandate, as well as Barack Obama’s promise to promote media diversity and prevent excessive media concentration. This deal will give Comcast unprecedented control over both media content and the physical network that delivers it. The FCC has opened Pandora’s Box, and we can soon expect a whole new swarm of mega-mergers that will have dire consequences for media and the Internet.

Such power concentrated in the hands of a single company is deeply troubling. Access to information from a variety of independent sources is essential to an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy. While the FCC has adopted conditions, they are insufficient short-term or voluntary fixes that will fail to prevent permanent harm to competition, consumer choice and the future of the Internet. This deal will drive up cable and Internet costs for subscribers, while further eliminating diverse, independent media content that is already woefully lacking in the commercial media….

Today, Comcast has won the jackpot, and once again, it is the American people who will end up paying out.

Harsh words, to be sure.

Comcast is expected to host a press conference at 4pm ET to “to discuss the Federal Communications Commission’s and Department of Justice’s clearance of the Company’s joint venture with General Electric related to NBC Universal.” We’ll see if the company will address any of these concerns.

DONE! Ventures, a Manhattan Beach, California-based Internet marketing and publishing firm, is slapping NBC Universal with a lawsuit after a domain name sales deal went awry.

DONE! CEO Ben Padnos claims NBC Universal accepted an offer to sell the domain names Women.com and Women.net for $1 million, only to have President & CEO Jeff Zucker overrule and block the transaction after the agreement was reached.

The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, June 3, alleges breach of contract on those grounds. According to the complaint, which we’ve embedded below, NBC Universal signed an exclusive agreement with domain brokerage firm Sedo.com for the sale of both domain names, each for $600,000, about two weeks ago.

DONE! Ventures says it made a $1 million offer on May 21, and that NBC Universal accepted this offer on May 24. Three days after the agreement was reached, Sedo informed DONE! that Zucker personally overruled the transaction and the domains were no longer for sale.

DONE! is now asking the Court to enforce “specific performance”, requiring NBC Universal to transfer ownership of the domains. The company says it is currently developing an online content network for which the domain name Women.com is critical, as the target audience will consist of “modern, powerful, intelligent women”.

As far as we know, GE-owned NBC Universal has never used the Women.com and Women.net domain names for any active websites, even though the company owns and operates iVillage, a media outlet specifically targeting women.

We asked NBC Universal for comment and are awaiting their response.

Update: the official response is … no comment.

The pending $30 billion merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal is going to complicate things for Hulu, the second most popular online video site after YouTube. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC, News Corp/Fox, and (since last year) Disney/ABC. It was created by the TV networks as a counterweight to YouTube, a safe place where they could run their full-length TV shows online with their own ads.

Comcast, however, is championing TV Everywhere, which is an entirely different model for professionally-produced Web video. TV Everywhere is going to put TV channels online behind a paywall where only existing cable subscribers can watch them. Once Comcast owns a part of Hulu, there will be more pressure to put parts of Hulu behind a paywall as well.

One knowledgeable industry source speculates that “Comcast will push Hulu very hard to become an authenticated destination for TV Everywhere.” If that happens, Hulu could end up offering less free content and more premium shows. In this scenario, there will be a two-tiered system. Some shows will be available for free, but a larger selection will be available only to paying cable subscribers.

TV Everywhere will work on a federated model. Comcast might have its own TV Everywhere portal, giving its subscribers access to many of the channels they get on their TVs. But individual networks can also set up their own online video sites available only to “authenticated” subscribers. HBO Go is an example of one such federated site. Hulu could set up become another authenticated site, offering the TV Everywhere fare only behind the paywall.

Ever since the Comcast-NBC merger was announced, questions have swirled about what will happen to Hulu and free TV on the Web. While NBC says it “has no plans to remove the kind of shows currently offered over the Internet on an ad-supported basis,” both NBC and Comcast refuse to guarantee that current or future TV shows will be available for free online.

Media companies in general seem to be backing away from Hulu. For instance, Viacom recently pulled two of the most popular shows from Hulu, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. Now the prospect of a two-tiered Hulu may confuse things even more for consumers.

Photo credit: Flickr/Richard Durdl

The app features interviews with journalists, political experts and politicians from the show’s weekly roundtable. Consumers can easily share clips via Twitter, access podcasts and send host David Gregory questions directly from the app. The app also features the show’s extra web interviews which are expanded roundtables on the top news of the day.

Boeing as the exclusive sponsor and advertiser of the app. A similar app will be launched for BlackBerry phones in April. Zumobi is actually not paid to develop apps, but actually takes a revenue share of branded content from advertising. Zumobi has also created iPhone apps for other NBC properties, including MSNBC, The Rachel Maddow Show, and The Today Show.

GE will contribute to the joint venture NBCU’s businesses valued at $30 billion, including its cable networks, filmed entertainment, televised entertainment, theme parks, and unconsolidated investments, subject to $9.1 billion in debt.

Comcast will put in its cable networks (including E!, Versus and the Golf Channel), its ten regional sports networks, and certain digital media properties, collectively valued at $7.25 billion. Comcast has also agreed to pay GE approximately $6.5 billion in cash. Former E! Networks President and CEO Ted Harbert will be heading the new entity, as he was recently promoted to President and CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group.

GE expects to realize $9.8 billion pre-tax in cash before debt reduction and transaction fees and after buyout of the Vivendi stake. GE expects to realize approximately $8 billion in cash after paying down the existing NBCU debt and transaction fees.

Headquarters for the business will remain in New York. The joint venture board will have three directors nominated by Comcast and two nominated by GE.

The transaction is subject to receipt of various regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, which is expected to be a very rocky road.

(Image source)

Mr Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”

Still no sign of the missing NBC shows on iTunes. But it looks more and more like NBC’s walkout may have just been a negotiating tactic.

At a panel discussion at the CES conference Tuesday, Senior Vice President of external & legal affairs for AT&T James Cicconi said that “what we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working” and further AT&T has been talking to technology companies, the MPAA and RIAA and “we are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this.”

But just in case you think this might be a per-download basis, the target could be much larger than that. General Counsel for NBC Universal Rick Cotton has P2P downloading as his first target, saying “The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status…the question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.”

This ISP level blocking would be fairly unique, given that most countries that implement censorship online do so at a national level, and usually target porn, moral or political subversion, such as in Australia and China.

Although this would be implemented by AT&T only at this stage giving customers who prefer their internet access without the hand of big brother the ability to change providers, remember that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. It could well spread to other ISPs as well, particularly once the MPAA and RIAA have one big win on the board.

With apologies to Monty Python again
“Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to copyright, and nice red uniforms.”

(via Engadget)

In the meantime, NBC has something brewing that could actually make a difference to the digital-download appeal on its own site, NBC Direct. NBC will soon start using peer-to-peer technology from Pando to distribute its downloads, a story StreamingMedia broke a couple weeks ago. Yesterday at the Web Video Summit in New York City, where I was moderating a panel, I was able to confirm that a stripped-down version of Pando’s technology will be incorporated into the NBC Direct video player. I also learned something new. The reason NBC wants to go with P2P technology is because it wants to start distributing high-definition videos. Pando’s P2P system can help NBC not just to lower the cost of distributing large files, but also to differentiate itself with HD video downloads. No special Vudu box or SanDisk USB video device will be necessary.

NBC will be betting big on HD to drive viewership of Web video. It is already playing around with HD streams on Hulu, its joint venture with News Corp. And it is not going to be just NBC. HD video is going to come to the Web a lot faster than most people think. It may even come to many people’s computer screens before it comes to their TV screens. Just think about that for a second. If you can get a better viewing experience off the Web than you can on your TV, that might just be the incentive you need to really start shifting away from TV.

Seems NBC Universal isn’t getting along with anyone these days. With no announcement whatsoever, NBC has pulled its channel from YouTube.com. Sources say that NBC will concentrate its efforts on Hulu, a joint venture with News Corp that is going into private beta soon.

Hulu is supposed to be a direct competitor with YouTube that comes directly from the studios with shows. Users will be able to stream or download new programs for a nominal fee. With services like Joost becoming increasingly popular and sites like YouTube and Dailymotion chugging along, NBC really has its work cut out for it this winter.

NBC pulls plug on YouTube channel [Afterdawn]

MobiTV Press Release [via Reuters]