“That’s right outta ‘Goodfellas,’ that’s right out of a mafioso going into a bar saying, ‘Nice bar you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Columbia's Alex Abdo said Brendan Carr of the FCC is close to “the definition of unconstitutional coercion" while Chuck Schumer called his rhetoric "despicable."

But it is unclear to what extent media companies might push back - at the potential expense of their bottom line.