Meetings Multiply As FCC Vets Comcast/NBCU Draft

A flurry of ex parte filings at the Federal Communications Commission in the Comcast/NBCU proceeding were posted January 6 as commissioners and their staff vetted the FCC's draft approval of the deal and interested parties made their cases.

A commission source says there is no new draft since the initial one was circulated just before Christmas. For example, Comcast and NBCU execs met with top staffers to Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn on Jan. 4 to talk up its commitment to adding 10 new minority-controlled independent nets, and apparently to defend the eight-year timeline for doing so. According to its filing, Comcast execs including Comcast EVP David Cohen and NBCU General Counsel Rick Cotton explained "that the timeline for adding those independent networks is reasonable given how long it typically takes to identify, contract with, and launch a new network." American Cable Association President Matt Polka lead a delegation that told the FCC that a baseball-style arbitration for carriage negotiation impasses--one of the FCC's proposed conditions on the deal, according to the draft--would provide no relief for small cable operators. Between them, Dish and DirecTV execs met with staffers from the offices of Clyburn, Copps and Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell, in at least Dish's case to push for applying program access, arbitration and standstill provisions that apply to traditional and online content alike. Bloomberg, a big critic of the deal, also met with Copps' staffers to push for a neighborhooding requirement--some variation is said to already be in the draft -- that would require Comcast to place a business news competitor like Bloomberg's TV channel adjacent to other business news channels like NBCU's CNBC.