With Comcast, the country’s largest Internet and cable provider, soon to own NBC Universal, we hear it “will have an incentive to prioritize NBC shows over other local and independent voices and programs, making it even harder to find alternatives on the cable dial.”

And that corporatized media destroys the “historic notions of a free, diverse, and independent press,” and we are heading toward a Ministry of Culture straight out of George Orwell’s “1984.”

Doubtful.

Comcast is buying a majority, 51 percent, of NBC Universal from the multinational corporation General Electric. General Electric will own the remaining share.

Media is driven by advertising, since that’s where money is made. Enter the Internet and it becomes more unstable since Internet advertising rates aren’t as strong as broadcast or print advertising rates.

During the last two decades, the top 10 media companies have owned, give or take, about 40 percent of all media and those 10 media companies have been a revolving door. Buyouts, mergers and bankruptcies are a regular occurrence.

Remember how AOL Time Warner was supposed to be the end of independent media on the Internet? It lasted nine years.

Vivendi, which once owned part of NBC Universal — it sold its remaining share to General Electric — had the ambition to buy all the world’s media. Its big buying spree in the late 1990s and 2000s failed within 10 years.

Viacom use to be the almighty media company owning numerous media outlets. Now it’s number four because it spun off CBS and sold off other subsidiaries. It recognized it had become too large to keep up with the necessary innovation.

Sure Comcast will now have Universal’s film library and movie studio as well as the news outlets of MSNBC, CNBC and NBC News, but who watches broadcast news anymore, and broadcast TV for that matter?

On cable, NBC has few networks compared to others. Bravo, Syfy, The Weather Channel and USA Network are the only NBC Universal networks available through Mediacom cable in Ames. News Corporation owns five. Time Warner owns six. Viacom owns seven. There are 65 channels total.

For Universal, this is the fifth owner in the last 20 years — it was previously owned by Matsushita, Seagram’s, Vivendi and General Electric.

How many actually like their Internet service providers? As the country begins to go wireless, service providers will likely go to battle with phone service companies because both provide wireless Internet. NBC Universal gives Comcast a new revenue stream and allows them to create content for the service they offer.

And why would Comcast give priority to NBC programming? That goes against the purpose of the Internet. Enough with the “it could happen” scenarios.

Comcast is simply getting ready for the future. Your television will soon be your portal to the Internet.