Liberman's White Area Arguments Should Be Separate Complaint, Comcast Says
Issues about white area feed distribution of Liberman should be dealt with in a complaint based on that, instead of the broadcaster trying to inject the matter into its carriage complaint, Comcast said in an FCC docket 16-121 filing posted…
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Monday. Citing Liberman's raising of white area feed matters (see 1705170005), Comcast said that's outside of Liberman's original complaint or what was presented in the record, and called it "gamesmanship." It said Liberman is instead trying to resurrect its bid for the same relief using "new unsubstantiated allegations and ... dubious facts." If the Media Bureau wants to address white area carriage matters, it should find that feed was treated as an adjunct to broadcast carriage in market negotiations and subject to the retransmission consent regime, where it could be subject of a separate complaint, the operator said. Liberman outside counsel Markham Erickson of Steptoe & Johnson said the Media Bureau "was wrong as a matter of law to hold that Liberman does not qualify as a 'video programming vendor' when it acts as a broadcaster, and we hope that the Bureau will reverse its earlier determination." Liberman noted that its EstrellaTV network reaches more markets in white areas than in broadcast markets and that Comcast is the only major MVPD that doesn't broadly distribute it, he said. "The sole reason for such disparate treatment, of course, is Comcast’s ownership of Telemundo and NBCUniverso."