Conservative super-PAC to run anti-Comcast ads

Comcast’s $45 billion bid to buy Time Warner Cable is coming under new fire from the right.

A conservative super-PAC will begin running ads on Wednesday accusing Comcast of overseeing the creation of biased, liberal news at NBC and MSNBC, both of which it owns.

{mosads}Conservative War Chest is planning to run its two-minute ad in five presidential battleground states — Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania — aiming to increase the pressure on the cable giant as its multi-billion dollar merger proposal enters the final weeks of regulatory review.

“Comcast-NBC Universal is becoming America’s most powerful and militant leftwing political force,” a narrator says in the ad, after accusing NBC and MSNBC of covering up for the Obama administration, aiding Democrats and criticizing the Tea Party as “racist” and “bigoted.” Comcast has owned NBC and its suite of television channels since a merger completed in 2011.

“Stop Comcast using NBC and MSNBC as a political assault and smear machine,” the narrator continues in the new ad, which was first revealed by Bloomberg on Tuesday. 

Michael Flynn, a spokesman for the Conservative War Chest, told The Hill that the ad will run on local NBC affiliates in the five states, in an attempt to have them discourage the national company from being “a one-note political news operation.” The ad buy is in the “mid-five figures,” Flynn said, and the super-PAC is also sending a 68-page letter to the stations “documenting the overt bias at Comcast and NBC News.”

“Our worry is the possibility of the collusion between the government and giant media companies like that,” Flynn added.

The pending merger has long been criticized by advocacy groups who claim it would turn Comcast into a corporate giant with the ability to stamp out any competition.

While much of the criticism has come from the right, some conservatives have worried that it would raise the profile of MSNBC and the liberal viewpoint that it often espouses.

Post-merger, Comcast might have the “enhanced capacity, due to its larger size, to discriminate against certain types of content, including political content,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told executives from the cable company in a hearing last year. 

The merger is currently under review by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. Executives expect regulators’ analysis to be completed early this year.