Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg set to complain to FCC on Monday

Russell Adams of The Wall Street Journal reports that Bloomberg LP is expected to Monday make good on its threat to complain to the Federal Communications Commission that Comcast is violating a condition of its takeover of NBCUniversal.

Adams writes, “That condition says that if the cable operator carries news or business channels relatively close to each other in the TV guide, all independent channels in that category have to be at nearby channels, namely in the same ‘neighborhood.’ The FCC crafted the order to prevent Comcast from giving preferential placement to newly controlled news networks like MSNBC and CNBC. The order didn’t specify in what proximity such channels would have to appear.

“It’s an issue Bloomberg has been harping on for a while. The media company raised it during federal regulators’ review of the deal, pushing them to impose rules that would prevent Comcast from relegating its business cable networks Bloomberg TV to cable’s hinterlands.

“An example of what Bloomberg dislikes: In Washington, D.C., CNN Headline News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and CNBC occupy channels 35-39. Bloomberg TV is channel 103.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.