The House Communications Subcommittee has not typically weighed...

The House Communications Subcommittee has not typically weighed in on such big deals as the proposed combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the panel’s Republican leader said Wednesday. “I'm going to let the experts in the agencies do their evaluation going forward,” Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told reporters after a subcommittee hearing. “We have not generally done hearings on specific deals because we have experts in the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and the FCC who are fully capable and competent at working through these.” But the issues of mergers and the video marketplace “may well be a topic” in the subcommittee’s Communications Act overhaul, he said. He declined to rule out a subcommittee hearing. The subcommittee had held one on the deal between Comcast and NBCUniversal.