Court rules against Comcast, Cablevision on new FCC program access rules

Comcast and Cablevision's quest to keep the HD feeds of the networks they own off of satellite and telco services was again dealt a loss Friday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld new FCC rules requiring them to share. Neither found that pleasing, with Comcast citing the continued exclusivity of NFL Sunday Ticket and NASCAR Hot Pass to DirecTV, while Cablevision whined about its latest spat with ABC. This might not be the end of things however, as the court voted the FCC could later rescind the rule if it decides it "is no longer timely," and it will likely play a part in the ongoing discussions over Comcast's proposed purchase of NBC.

[matte05 Posted Mar 15th 2010 10:53AM]

I don't agree with Comcast's tactics with Versus, but I have to agree with them about NFL Sunday Ticket, especially since the exclusivity means D* gets to charge whatever they want. It's ridiculous that I would need to spend >$300 to watch all 16 games my out-of-market NFL team plays, but $200 gets me all 162 games of my out-of-market baseball team. I know that the NFL is a more popular product than MLB, but come on.

[ThaPhenom Posted Mar 15th 2010 12:49PM]

@matte05 The difference is DirecTV does not own the content for Sunday Ticket and NASCAR Hot Pass. Comcast is trying to obfuscate the issue at hand, which is content owners who are also content providers withholding programming content, directly or indirectly.

Also, as it's been stated before, broadcast networks would not pay anything close to what they are paying now for NFL broadcast rights if Sunday Ticket was available to cable.

[longhairbilly Posted Mar 16th 2010 4:41PM]

@ThaPhenom
Well said.

[jwardell Posted Mar 15th 2010 11:29AM]

Agreed, exclusivity hurts everyone. For me it's the fact that I can't get Comcast-owned NECN on DirecTV. And if Comcast merges with NBC I can't imagine how far this will go. FCC needs to straighten this all out before it gets worse.

[mburstin Posted Mar 15th 2010 12:00PM]

So Comcast wants things both ways. They complain about not having access to Sunday Ticket (a legitimate complaint) but then says they want exclusive access to Versus. Lets remove the exclusive for both and make everybody (read consumers) happy.

[engadgetcomexcludeengadget Posted Mar 15th 2010 4:54PM]

I find it ironic that Comcast wants to keep their HD feeds to themselves, yet G4 (which is owned by Comcast) has been on fios in HD for a while now, and I just got it in HD last week from Comcast. Why not give us channels they own before selling the rights to other providers.

As for the issue at hand, I think Comcast should just create divide into 2 or more divisions like MS did a few years ago so that they don't technically own the feeds anymore, and then set up an exclusivity contract with themselves. I don't think that either side is right, because they both have valid arguments. Does the principle really have the right to tell his students to share their pudding? And would it be nice for the student to not share with the poor kid that has not lunch? It wouldn't be nice, but it's definitely fair.