Comcast made more concessions to groups representing minorities, reaching a memorandum...

League and the National Action Network said the companies agreed to add independently owned networks in which minorities have “substantial participation either through ownership or operational control” and increase giving to entities that serve blacks and are led by them. The memorandum is “a comprehensive commitment covering all business units and focusing on ... corporate governance, employment/workforce recruitment and retention, procurement, programming and philanthropy and community investment,” Comcast Vice President Payne Brown wrote on the company blog. “We have committed to carry ten new independent channels, four of which will be African American owned or managed.” Outgoing House Competition Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ga., supports the Comcast-NBC Universal transaction, he wrote the FCC commissioners Friday. “I believe the parties have satisfactorily demonstrated” that the deal won’t “undermine competition in the media and telecommunications industry,” Johnson wrote. Free Press, which opposes the combination, thinks it’s “troubling” that the FCC may be close to finishing work on it, said Policy Counsel Corie Wright. “For six months, Comcast has refused to comply with the FCC’s May 2010 request for Comcast’s cable carriage contracts with independent programmers,” she said. “These contracts are essential to assessing whether and how Comcast limits independent programmers’ ability to distribute their content as a way of depriving emerging online rivals of the ability to compete.” “The government has asked for and received from Comcast and NBCU extraordinary volumes of information to conduct its thorough review, and that review has been under way for nearly 11 months at the FCC” and Justice Department, a Comcast spokeswoman said. “'This is a time when parties come out of the woodwork seeking leverage,'” she said of Free Press, quoting incoming House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. (CD Dec 15 p8). “That is what this organization is seeking, and it should be rejected.” As of Friday afternoon, no proposed order had circulated at the commission for a vote, an agency official said. One may circulate this week, but probably not until after the net neutrality vote Tuesday, commission officials have said (CD Dec 14 p3).