Bloomberg petitions FCC to lift stay

Bloomberg petitioned the FCC on Friday to lift its stay of a portion of its news neighborhooding order and require Comcast to immediately “neighborhood” its business news channels in 59 additional markets.

John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable writes, “The FCC back in May agreed with Bloomberg that Comcast needed to move the independent news channel into ‘news neighborhoods’ — groupings of news channels in adjacent channel positions — to comply with an NBCU deal condition. That condition was meant to prevent Comcast from favoring its co-owned news nets, like MSNCB or CNBC, over independents.

“The FCC, in an order clarifying its May 2 order to Comcast to neighborhood Bloomberg TV channels, on Aug. 14 stayed the effectiveness of its order as it applied to markets with only a single standard-definition news neighborhood and no vacant adjacent channels.

“The FCC said the partial stay would reduce consumer disruption if the FCC changes its decision per a review Bloomberg itself has asked for. But Bloomberg said in its petition that the stay would allow Comcast to ‘continue to flout the terms of the news neighborhooding condition included in the Comcast-NBC Universal Merger Order,’ and further reduce the time it would have to comply with the news neighborhooding condition given that it was limited to seven years and it is now 20 months since the NBCU deal was approved.”

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