Allbritton Cites Comcast Harm

By John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 9/6/2010 12:01:00 AM

Washington — Allbritton Communications continues to press its case at the Federal Communications Commission for conditions on Comcast’s proposed NBC Universal joint venture, a move Comcast labeled a “misuse” of the process to extract concessions in advance of carriage negotiations.

According to an FCC filing, Allbritton president Fred Ryan and Jerry Fritz, the company’s senior vice president for legal and strategic affairs, met with a top adviser to Democratic commissioner Mignon Clyburn last Monday to argue that the deal should not be approved without protection for Allbritton’s TBD TV, a local cable-news channel formerly known as NewsChannel 8, and other similar channels that compete with NBCU-owned stations. (Allbritton also owns WJLA-TV, the Washington, D.C., ABC affiliate.)

Allbritton said that while Comcast has agreed to negotiate for renewed carriage of TBD TV in Washington, its insistence on tying that to retransmission consent for its broadcast-TV stations in other markets devalues the news channel — which Allbritton argues is Comcast’s intent. Allbritton said in comments it opposed the merger without those conditions and argued for either forced divestitures of stations or cable systems in key markets or unbundling carriage negotiations for local/regional cable channels — like TBD TV — from retransmission negotiations.

Ryan and Allbritton chairman Robert Allbritton also met with various staffers and commissioners, including FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, to argue for conditions.

Comcast said Allbritton is refusing to engage in reasonable negotiations and has “concocted” a theory of harm. It also noted Allbritton did not raise the issue in initial comments, as the FCC required all parties to do.

Comcast also said Allbritton’s claim that Comcast wants to devalue TBD TV is “speculative, unsubstantiated and wrong.” It said Allbritton wants to decouple retransmission negotiations from TBD TV so it can boost the price for those TV-station signals in the future.

Comcast said it is willing to renew current agreements with Allbritton “for as long as Allbritton wishes” and will negotiate for TBD TV by itself, but at a price that is “appropriate.”

Comcast said it won’t pay a premium for TBD TV that includes the value of retransmission for the broadcast stations, then pay again separately for those stations in decoupled negotiations.