The FCC should deny Comcast and its NBCUniversal’s request to broaden the...
The FCC should deny Comcast and its NBCUniversal’s request to broaden the types of people who can sign a protective order to see online video distributors’ deals with other content companies when an OVD uses a content benchmarking curb in…
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the merger order, said six major opponents of what the combined companies seek (CD April 4 p10). Comcast and NBCUniversal want to show the OVDs’ deals with other broadcast, cable and film content owners to executives and in-house lawyers, instead of just outside counsel. “Programming contracts contain extremely sensitive business data and information that warrant heightened confidentiality protection,” a lawyer for News Corp. reported representatives of that company, CBS, Sony Pictures, Time Warner and Viacom told commission staffers including those who have reviewed some transactions. An executive of Disney, like the five content owners part of the “content companies,” left a phone message with one of the agency officials expressing the same view, said the ex parte filing posted Friday to docket 10-56 (http://xrl.us/bm7tvg). The six companies “are innocent third parties who have been drawn unwillingly into this matter through no action of their own,” the filing said. “C-NBCU’s own filings with the Commission confirm that it can, and already has” struck deals with some OVDs, it said. “The Commission already contemplated that binding commercial arbitration should serve as the safety valve for a circumstance when C-NBCU and an OVD reach a bargaining impasse with respect to a program rights negotiation,” the filing said. “Providing C-NBCU with access to confidential programming agreements at the outset of discussions with an OVD effectively would render meaningless the concept of marketplace negotiations."