‘It seems odd’ that the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network got a favorab...
“It seems odd” that the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network got a favorable FCC Media Bureau ruling on its carriage dispute with Comcast but the Enforcement Bureau recently recommended that an administrative law judge side with the cable operator, said WealthTV…
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CEO Robert Herring. “If the FCC lets stand that withholding carriage does not cause harm, [that] completely guts” Section 616 of the Communications Act “and will cause major repercussions to independent programmers,” Herring told us. The bureau weighed in against WealthTV’s program carriage complaint against Comcast and three other cable operators being heard by the same judge, Richard Sippel, the commission’s chief administrative law judge. Herring said his case and MASN v. Comcast were treated differently because a statement by Comcast Chief Operating Officer Steve Burke was allowed into the record in the MASN case but not WealthTV’s. Burke said Comcast treated channels it owned like “siblings,” Herring said. FCC precedent for MASN’s arguments includes the commission’s 2006 order approving Comcast and Time Warner Cable’s purchase of Adelphia and the Media Bureau’s ruling in MASN v. Time Warner, an industry official said.