Comcast To FCC: Reject ACA's Call For Merger Conditions

Comcast told the Federal Communications Commission to reject the American Cable Association's calls for program-access and retransmission-consent conditions on its proposed joint venture with NBCU, saying they are "wholly unjustified."

In a filing at the FCC, the top cable operator said that, as it has demonstrated in "extensive filings" and economic reports, the transaction "poses no competitive harms" that need addressing through such conditions, that ACA's arguments are simply a "rehashing" of its previous calls for industry-wide changes, and are thus neither narrowly tailored or transaction specific. ACA's proposed conditions, which have been endorsed by an alliance of small telcos, including the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunication Companies, would apply program-access rules to all television stations, owned or managed by NBC, as well as to all regional sports nets (RSNs) delivered either by satellite or terrestrially and to online distribution; unbundle TV station retrans deals from other carriage agreements and do the same for RSNs; invoke outside arbitration for retrans impasses and special arbitration for the smaller operators ACA represents; and implement standstill agreements so NBC stations cannot remove signals during retrans impasses.