The Department of Justice isn't the only federal agency that appears to be skeptical of a merger of the nation's two largest cable companies. The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly close to a procedural move that would make it difficult for Comcast's purchase of Time Warner Cable to be approved.

According to The Wall Street Journal, FCC staff has decided that the commission should issue a hearing designation order. "In effect, that would put the $45.2 billion merger in the hands of an administrative law judge, and would be seen as a strong sign the FCC doesn’t believe the deal is in the public interest," the Journal wrote, attributing the information to anonymous sources. "A hearing could be a drawn-out process, and some regulatory experts describe the procedure as a deal-killer, though Comcast would be entitled to make its case for the tie-up."

The FCC hasn't announced its intentions for the Comcast/TWC deal. A commission spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Ars, saying the merger is still under review.

When contacted by Ars, Comcast said, “We had one in a series of meetings with the Department of Justice yesterday, as well as another meeting with the FCC. As with all of our DOJ discussions in the past and going forward, we do not believe it is appropriate to share the content of those meetings publicly, and we therefore have no comment. Similarly, our only comment on FCC meetings will be our filed ex parte communication." That ex parte has not yet been filed.

The merger also faces trouble at the Justice Department, where antitrust lawyers are expected to recommend that the department file a lawsuit to block the deal. Combined, a DOJ lawsuit and an FCC hearing designation order could kill the merger. In 2011, AT&T dropped its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile after the DOJ and FCC decided to take those same steps.

Advocates both for and against the merger agree that the DOJ and FCC news bodes poorly for Comcast. TechFreedom, a libertarian think tank, issued a statement condemning the agencies for interfering with the merger. “Blocking the Comcast-TWC merger won’t actually do anything to increase competition, encourage deployment or promote adoption among the underserved,” TechFreedom President Berin Szoka said. “The two companies don’t compete with each other in any broadband market. Making competition easier requires a lot of small reforms, none of which will make headlines, but together will help telcos compete with cable providers, help new players like Google Fiber enter the market, and make wireless a stronger alternative.”

Public Knowledge Senior VP Harold Feld, who opposes the merger, wrote a post analyzing how the process went sour for Comcast. The deal seems to be "on the ropes and sinking fast," but it's "too early to pop the champagne," he wrote.

"Obviously, as an opponent of the deal, I would not be surprised of staff at DOJ and the FCC, after reviewing the record, concluded that this deal caused serious anti-competitive harm and offered no offsetting benefits," Feld wrote. "But, as someone who has played regulatory poker with Comcast for 15 years now, I can say from personal experience that no one counts Comcast out until the game is well and truly over. Even if the rumors are true (and I have no way of knowing), these would only be staff recommendations. Comcast still has plenty of opportunities to plead, cajole and bully DOJ and FCC into submission."

There's a strong antitrust case against the merger, Feld wrote. The DOJ is examining whether Comcast violated a condition of its 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal by influencing the management of Hulu, he noted.

"This is only one example floating around of the many ways Comcast can, and does, leverage its existing market power to foreclose rivals," he wrote. " And Comcast kept providing new examples throughout the merger review. Comcast demonstrated how its ability to control access to its massive subscriber base could crush rival Netflix by degrading Netflix’s interconnection point with Comcast until Netflix agreed to pay for access. Comcast remains stubbornly slow in authenticating cable subscriptions for those trying to stream 'TV Everywhere' video applications like HBO Go on devices that compete with its Xfinity X1 system."

Since Comcast announced the merger more than a year ago, there have also been many customer service horror stories, including cases where Comcast made it extremely difficult for customers to cancel service.

"All of these help make the case that Comcast already has substantial market power in multiple markets, and that acquisition of Time Warner Cable (and accompanying regional concentration from system swaps with Charter) would make things much worse," Feld wrote.

If the Comcast/TWC merger is doomed, it will also prevent some other related deals from happening. Charter's plan to buy Bright House Networks is contingent on Comcast/TWC being approved, and Charter also stands to gain customers in the aforementioned system swaps. Comcast also plans to shed some of its less-desirable territory in a spinoff that would create an entirely new cable company serving 2.5 million subscribers in the Midwest and Southeast, but that too is contingent on approval of the Time Warner Cable buy.