Appeal Planned in $20 Billion Programming Discrimination Suit Against Comcast, TWC
The National Association of African American Owned Media and a media company plan to appeal this week seeking to overturn a U.S. District Court's dismissal of a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast, Time Warner Cable and an array of civil rights organizations and individuals. "We want to get this reversed," Skip Miller of law firm Miller Barondess, representing NAAAOM, told us Monday.
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Judge Terry Hatter dismissed a suit Wednesday brought in February by Entertainment Studios Networks and the NAAAOM in which they alleged a pattern of racial discrimination largely by Comcast in its channel carriage and advertising practices. In his ruling, Hatter said the plaintiffs failed to show the court had jurisdiction over some defendants -- the National Urban League, NAACP, Al Sharpton and his National Action Network, and CTIA now-President Meredith Baker-- and the claims against them were dismissed. Meanwhile, even if the factual allegations against Comcast and TWC in the complaint were true, the plaintiffs failed to show that the alleged misconduct was plausible rather than just possible, Hatter said. In a statement to us Monday, TWC said it "believed from the beginning that this lawsuit had no merit, and we’re gratified that the court agreed with us." Comcast didn't comment. When the suit was filed, Comcast was buying TWC, a deal that now has been scuttled. The plaintiffs also had sued DirecTV (see 1412040060).
The suit against Comcast alleged it essentially segregated media businesses into two silos -- white-owned and black-owned, with black-owned media companies such as Entertainment Studios not given the same opportunity to compete for licensing agreements. When talking with Comcast about carriage in 2014, Entertainment Studios was told Comcast said it would consider such a contract only as it would satisfy an obligation it bore under various voluntary memoranda of understanding from its 2010 bid for NBCUniversal to carry minority-owned networks, the suit alleged: "But for the existence of the MOUs, it is reasonably probable that Comcast would have contracted with Entertainment Studios for carriage." Added Miller, "Good programming, won't carry it."
The civil rights entities named as defendants give "the appearance of legitimacy" of those practices, helping silence any critics, the suit said. Comcast had an array of MOUs with such groups "to whitewash [its] discriminatory business practices," Entertainment Studios and NAAAOM alleged in the suit. Baker, who as an FCC commissioner voted to approve Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal, was hired by Comcast shortly afterward as a senior vice president, which the suit called "a blatant and horrific conflict of interest and betrayal of the public trust."
The suit was filed as Comcast and TWC headed toward the now-scuttled deal. TWC was named as a plaintiff because it also had opted not to carry Entertainment Studios or any other solely black-owned programmer and had, at the time of the suit, ceded channel carriage decision-making to Comcast in advance of what was going to be a merger of the two companies. Comcast's buy of TWC was "part of a growing national trend of media consolidation that will further concentrate racial discrimination in contracting and eliminate diverse voices," the suit said.