Bloomberg LP is asking the federal government to require Comcast to sell CNBC to acquire NBC, reports Bob Fernandez of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Fernandez writes, ¨Comcast says it has tried to settle its dispute with Bloomberg TV, but it could not reach an agreement. It and others say the New York media company appears to be using the merger review process to renegotiate terms for its carriage deal with Comcast, which is not the purpose of the merger review.
¨Rather than hurting Bloomberg TV, Comcast says it has expanded its distribution of Bloomberg into an additional 1.5 million Comcast homes since the NBC Universal deal was announced last December.
“‘We have a current long-term deal with Bloomberg TV that we entered into when we had no competitive business channel and we were not thinking of acquiring a competitive business channel,’ David L. Cohen, Comcast’s executive vice president, said Friday. ‘We’ve done nothing to disadvantage Bloomberg’s position since the deal was announced.¨
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