Comcast-NBCU Order May Still Circulate Before Christmas
An FCC order on Comcast’s plan to buy control of NBC Universal may circulate yet before Friday’s federal holiday, industry and commission officials said. If the order didn’t circulate late Wednesday, and it wasn’t as of 5 p.m., it may go to the eighth floor Thursday, they said. Approval by commissioners is unlikely this year, agency and industry officials have said (CD Dec 21 p5). Comcast said Wednesday the deal won’t be completed by Dec. 31.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The companies continued this week talking about possible conditions on the deal with the FCC and Justice Department, as groups seeking changes to the transaction offered other proposals, filings in docket 10-56 show. Conditions under consideration concern the distribution of online video, the Hulu Internet video website partly owned by NBC Universal and other broadcast networks, and the provision of broadband service and set-top boxes, a Comcast filing said. “Should the Commission decide to adopt conditions in any of these areas, such conditions should be limited in scope and duration.” NBC Universal and Comcast executives met with FCC and Justice Department officials for a second straight weekend (CD Dec 15 p11) on Saturday, the filing showed.
There’s “no utility” for pay-TV companies with 125,000 subscribers or less to get baseball-style commercial arbitration from the FCC in carriage disputes with Comcast-NBC Universal, the American Cable Association said. That would be true even with a requirement that if the combined company lost it would reimburse arbitration costs, but if it won the parties would bear their own costs, the association said. “The expected benefit from winning arbitration would exceed the cost of arbitration only where the operator had more than at least 125,000 subscribers who could benefit from the expected cost savings gained by arbitrating disputes over carriage of that programming.” Bloomberg suggested that the FCC require Comcast to carry all independent news channels, such as Bloomberg’s financial news, in slots near one occupied by a network in the same genre affiliated with the cable operator or NBC Universal.
"Because of the lead time required to prepare for a close” of the deal with NBC Universal parent General Electric, it won’t happen in 2010, a Comcast spokeswoman said. “We believe the regulatory review puts us on track for a closing in January,” and the commission and Justice Department appear to be making “substantial process toward approval of our transaction,” she said. NBC Universal has “made substantial progress this month” with the FCC and DOJ and expects to get a “green light” from them for the deal next month, CEO Jeff Zucker wrote employees Wednesday. “The official close of the transaction would happen shortly after government approval.” A spokesman for the Media Bureau, whose staff is reviewing the deal, declined to comment.
That Comcast-NBC Universal won’t be completed this year is “not a surprise” to Wall Street, analyst Marci Ryvicker of Wachovia wrote investors. “The hold up seems to be the potential concessions surrounding online distribution -- specifically program access rules which currently cover linear television but not online video.” The “hang up” appears to be from the commission, not DOJ, she said. “Applying program access rules to online video is extremely difficult given lack of precedence and ‘market rates’ for this type of content,” though there “will be some restrictions,” Ryvicker said. “Given the FCC’s desire to promote ‘innovation’ as described in accordance with the net neutrality proposal passed yesterday, we do not believe that Comcast will be ‘handcuffed’ by rules that will dis-incentivize the company from exploring different online distribution methods.”