Comcast and NCTA filed initial briefs on the cable company’s appeal...
Comcast and NCTA filed initial briefs on the cable company’s appeal of an FCC program carriage order requiring its systems distribute the Tennis Channel as widely as two of the operator’s own sports channels. The operator’s First Amendment rights were…
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violated by the order in favor of the channel, Comcast and the NCTA said Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (docket 12-1337). Free speech also is at issue in Time Warner Cable’s appeal of a 2012 program carriage order allowing the Media Bureau to require continued carriage of an independent channel by an operator alleged to have favored its own content, as a complaint is adjudicated (CD Oct 4 p3). This year’s Tennis Channel enforcement order “compels Comcast (and only Comcast) to afford Tennis Channel a benefit -- i.e., penetration parity with Golf Channel and Versus -- that no major distributor in the marketplace believed Tennis Channel had earned,” the operator said. “It imposes this compelled speech based primarily on its application of malleable and easily manipulated content-based standards.” NCTA has a First Amendment interest in the appeal, the association said. “To justify overriding cable operators’ carriage decisions, therefore, the government at a minimum must demonstrate -- not just claim -- that its interference with private speech serves an important governmental interest."