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Executives at Comcast and General Electric are expected to announce a deal Thursday that has GE selling 51 percent of NBC Universal to the cable giant for $30 billion. But critics are worried giving one media company control over so much of the television industry could harm consumers.

We’re looking at media perspectives on the proposed merger from The Wall Street Journal, The Seattle Times, CNBC, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.

Sam Schechner of The Wall Street Journal gives his take.

“Comcast already owns a number of networks, E!, Style, Versus, which is a up-start sports network, but what this does, and what I think Comcast executives believe is one of the major goals of this deal is to add a huge amount of scale to that, to add a lot more content to that pipeline.”

But an editorial in The Seattle Times Sunday argues that allowing one company to control such a large amount of entertainment content will only hurt the consumer.

“This conglomeration of content and its delivery system is ripe for high prices being foisted on viewers and smaller cable companies that could be charged a lot more to have their content carried over Comcast's vast system.”

Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair says on CNBC that previous media mergers have only shifted value without creating profit for the companies involved.

“In the long consideration of these deals, I don’t know anybody who has looked at them closely that says ‘Hey, this was really a good idea.’”

Cecilia Kang of The Washington Post writes that Comcast will agree to a number of concessions like content sharing agreements with competitors in order to appease regulators wary of the proposed company’s large size.

“The $30 billion transaction would significantly reshape the media landscape by giving the nation's largest cable and broadband Internet provider control over content that makes up one out of five TV viewing hours.”

On The Huffington Post David Kronke writes that in the era of government intervention it wouldn’t be smart to let a company like NBC, which has struggled in the ratings war this decade, have such control in the television industry.

“While NBC can scarcely be considered an industry leader these days, it does appear to be the primary inspiration for the American government's policies, a template for fiasco that our leaders have followed assiduously.”

So what do you think? Should one media company be allowed to have control over so much of the entertainment industry?

Writer: Justin Wolfgang

Producer: Justin Wolfgang