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NBC Affiliates Ask FCC to Ensure Comcast Keeps Sports on Broadcast Network

Jun 11, 2010  •  Post A Comment

NBC affiliates met with Federal Communications Commission staff and commissioners this week to ask that regulatory approval of the network with Comcast require the cable company to commit to keep sports on the broadcast network, the Los Angeles Times’ Company Town blog reports.

The agency needs to ensure "availability of highly valued sporting events on free, over-the-air broadcasting by preventing the migration of such programming to Comcast cable channels," according to a regulatory filing by the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling, which represents the NBC affiliate board, the article says.

NBC Sports’ offerings include the Olympics, NFL Football and NHL Hockey. The affiliates also asked the agency to make sure Comcast won’t drop a station from its affiliate line-up in a market where the cable system could create its own channel to carry the network. tjhe report notes. The last request was to ban Comcast from bundling affiliation agreements and retransmission consent agreements, because of concern that Comcast might use its leverage as the owner of NBC to cut favorable retransmission consent deals for itself.

One Comment

  1. Hasn’t the government heard enough reasons yet why Comcast shouldn’t be allowed to buy NBC? This is a very bad deal for consumers, affiliates, Satellite Distributors, and many others.

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