Many people including FTVLive think that Comcast's proposed takeover of Time Warner is not a good idea.

Yesterday, a Senate Judiciary Committee held its hearing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger and many Senators seemed to be very skeptical about the deal.

The most combative moments in the hearing came courtesy of Minnesota senator Al Franken, who has made no secret of his opposition to the deal.

“There is no doubt that Comcast is a huge influential corporation, and I understand that there are over 100 lobbyists making the case for this deal to my colleagues and our staffs,” Franken said as he was called to ask question. He then noted that he had petitions signed by “over 100,000 people” questioning the deal. “I am against this deal, because I believe it does not meet other tests.”

Later in the hearing, Franken questioned Comcast’s business strategy to “upsell” consumers into bundles of services, as well as its “neighborhooding" dispute with Bloomberg TV.

Senators on both sides of the aisle seemed skeptical of some of the claims made by Comcast.

"Some of my friends here have never met a merger they didn’t like,” said Senator Orrin Hatch during the hearing.

Mike Lee, who also expressed generally support for the merger, with one caveat:

“Given well known political leanings of NBC, Comcast-Time Warner Cable might have the ability to discriminate against content, in particular conservative political content,” Lee said, referring to MSNBC, the left-leaning cable news channel owned by NBCUniversal. (Of course Comcast is also one of the closest cable partners to Fox News.)

H/T Capital NY