Federal review of the Comcast-NBC Universal deal is intensifying and could lead to government approval with many conditions as soon as December, lobbyists and government officials said. They said the Department of Justice remains further along than the FCC in reviewing Comcast’s multibillion dollar agreement to buy control of NBC Universal. The DOJ may finish its work on the deal in December, while it’s less certain when FCC commissioners will get an order to vote on, said FCC, industry and nonprofit officials. Comcast executives have said they hope to get regulatory approval for the deal this year.
The FCC media ownership review due to Congress in 2010 has been further delayed (CD May 18 p4), and a final order is unlikely until the second half of next year, agency officials said. They said the reasons include a lag in getting from Congress money that the commission needed to pay for outsiders such as professors to study media ownership (CD Aug 9 p6). The FCC’s focus on broadband, the difficulty of completing the quadrennial review on time -- which has never been done before -- and career Media Bureau staffers focusing on reviewing Comcast’s multibillion dollar purchase of control in NBC Universal are other explanations, agency and industry officials said.
Those lobbying the FCC would get more time to report most conversations in ex parte filings, which would need to have more details than some do now, under a draft order awaiting commissioner approval, agency officials said. They said the order sticks mainly sticks to what was proposed in a rulemaking notice on ex partes approved by commissioners in February. A twist is that the draft contains a rulemaking notice to seek further comment on the disclosure of financial ties to companies, groups and others lobbying the FCC, said agency officials. That subject isn’t now part of the draft order’s provisions, they said.
Cablevision will give subscribers a $10 credit to pay for the cost of viewing World Series games live on MLB.com, since customers lack cable access to the games on the Fox network. Cable subscribers who buy the website’s “Postseason.TV” packages will get the credit, applied within two billing cycles to their monthly bill, Cablevision said late Wednesday. Late the next day, the cable operator asked government entities and non profits to consider retransmitting the World Series online for free. That’s allowed under the Copyright Act of 1976, Cablevision said.
Three dozen nonprofits asked the FCC to resume collecting the numbers of minorities and women employed at each broadcaster, after a lapse of most of the past decade. They said late Thursday it’s far past time for the commission to require radio and TV stations to fill out Form 395-B yearly and for the FCC to disclose publicly each broadcaster’s information. Those requesting the commission action include the Communications Workers of America, Common Cause, Free Press, the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge. Broadcasters have asked that the data be kept private and submitted to a third party, not the FCC, a position that some still support, said nonprofit and industry officials.
Online content accessibility was raised for the first time in a continuing dispute (CD Oct 15 p2) between a broadcaster and cable operator when News Corp. wouldn’t let Cablevision subscribers access the Internet programming from its Fox network because of a linear content blackout, communications lawyers said. A retransmission consent impasse begun around 12:01 a.m. Saturday means all 3 million of the cable operators’ video subscribers can’t see Fox’s three New York and Philadelphia TV stations via Cablevision, and a quick resolution may not occur, industry and government officials said. For more than half the day Saturday, all of Cablevision’s 2.6 million Internet service subscribers couldn’t access any Fox content on Hulu, the video website partly owned by News Corp.
Online content accessibility was raised for the first time in a continuing dispute between a broadcaster and cable operator when News Corp. wouldn’t let Cablevision subscribers access the Internet programming from its Fox network because of a linear content blackout, communications lawyers said. A retransmission consent impasse begun around 12:01 a.m. Saturday means all 3 million of the cable operators’ video subscribers can’t see Fox’s three New York and Philadelphia TV stations via Cablevision, and a quick resolution may not occur, industry and government officials said. For more than half the day Saturday, all of Cablevision’s 2.6 million Internet service subscribers couldn’t access any Fox content on Hulu, the video website partly owned by News Corp.
Online content accessibility was raised for the first time in a continuing dispute between a broadcaster and cable operator when News Corp. wouldn’t let Cablevision subscribers access the Internet programming from its Fox network because of a linear content blackout, communications lawyers said. A retransmission consent impasse begun around 12:01 a.m. Saturday means all 3 million of the cable operators’ video subscribers can’t see Fox’s three New York and Philadelphia TV stations via Cablevision, and a quick resolution may not occur, industry and government officials said. For more than half the day Saturday, all of Cablevision’s 2.6 million Internet service subscribers couldn’t access any Fox content on Hulu, the video website partly owned by News Corp.
A proposal by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell for broadcasters to come up with their own standards on indecency has drawn some early interest from the TV industry but no pledges of the dialogue sought. FCC enforcement of its own indecency rules is restricted by a recent appeals court loss. The plan floated at the NAB radio show (CD Oct 1 p1) by McDowell, a Republican, hasn’t led to serious talks between the commission and industry, and neither side appears to have made an entreaty to the other to begin a conversation, commission and industry officials said. Some broadcasters are skeptical of McDowell’s plan -- which drew some support from one former FCC chairman even as another said it’s unworkable -- while others may be interested, executives and government officials said.
The restart of discussions on a net neutrality agreement seems to have at least the tacit approval of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, industry officials said. Commission officials have made it clear that the agency probably won’t hold another round of discussion, after negotiations brokered by Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus collapsed two weeks ago. By keeping discussions going, Genachowski will at least be able to show Congress that the commission isn’t moving rashly to reclassify broadband transmission as a Title II service, executives said. They said the talks don’t give him an escape hatch for the conundrum he faces in which public-interest groups are unlikely to join the talks and so he may still need to decide whether to promulgate rules or wait for Congress to do so.