Without limited access to certain confidential distribution agreements that online video...
Without limited access to certain confidential distribution agreements that online video distributors (OVDs) reach with other media companies, Comcast and NBCUniversal won’t be able to make a licensing offer to an OVD that’s invoking the Benchmark Condition of the FCC…
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order approving Comcast’s purchase of NBCU. That’s what Kathryn Zachem, Comcast’s senior vice president of regulatory and state legislative affairs, told aides to all five FCC commissioners last week, an ex parte notice shows (http://bit.ly/ZBiBTf). The Media Bureau last week stayed its own order that clarified the condition to require such disclosure until the full commission can weigh in (CD March 8 p16). The condition granted OVDs access to Comcast/NBCU programming after reaching a similar deal with a peer media company. But without the bureau’s clarification, Comcast/NBCU would have to resort to “an unnecessary and costly arbitration process” to be able to “craft an offer that is economically equivalent to the price, terms and condition of an OVD’s peer deal,” the ex parte notice said. “In other words, arbitration would become the norm, rather than the exception in order to effectuate the purpose of the Benchmark Condition,” it said.