Comcast under fire for possible violations before NBCU purchase
Federal regulators are weighing taking action against Comcast for allegedly violating 2011 agreements that enabled the cable company to buy NBCUniversal. Apparently, the allegations were made during the public comment period of the review of Comcast’s now defunct plan to acquire Time Warner Cable and officials at both the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department have spent the past few weeks sifting through those claims. In some instances, Comcast agreed not to take certain actions, like interfere in another company’s actions -- and Comcast agreed to support certain initiatives, sources said. “They’re siting on a ton of potential evidence,” one source close to the process, explained. “They’re asking themselves if they can create a separate proceeding or whether they need a new complaint to allow [the evidence] to be introduced.” Alleged complaints being parsed by regulators include:
- Comcast tied linear programming negotiations with digital deals -- forcing programmers to sell to Comcast digital rights to their content on the same or better terms than they sold it to other online video distributors -- when they promised not to.
- Some minority-focused channels complained they were given carriage deals on Comcast systems but that they were not made widely available enough to support a real business.
- NBCUniversal’s just-announced deal to use Comcast set-top box data to help it win advertising creates an uneven playing field.
- Comcast’s alleged comments that Hulu, which it co-owns, should not be sold by its other owners -- 21st Century Fox and Disney -- allegedly broke an agreement not to interfere with the running of the digital video service.
Comcast under fire for possible violations before NBCU purchase