Court: FCC, Tennis Channel Failed To Make Discrimination Case Against Comcast

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has unanimously ruled that Comcast did not violate the Federal Communications Commission's program carriage rules.

"The Commission has failed to identify adequate evidence of unlawful discrimination," the court concluded. It did not reach issues regarding the First Amendment or statute of limitations. In writing for the majority, Judge Stephen Williams wrote that the court concluded that the commission "has nothing to refute Comcast's contention that its rejection of Tennis' proposal was simply a straight-up financial analysis." In essence, the court was agreeing with Comcast that Tennis had not shown how its proposal of wider carriage provided any business benefit to the cable operator that it would be forgoing to favor its own co-owned networks. Cable operators are allowed to discriminate in carriage so long as it is not for anticompetitive reasons.