Comcast

With an eye toward consolidating its Los Angeles-area operations, Comcast Corp. has purchased 10 Universal City Plaza, the tallest office building in the San Fernando Valley, for its NBCUniversal division. Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit is the largest tenant at the property, which sold for about $420 million, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.

The FCC has upheld a decision it made last year ordering Comcast to put Bloomberg TV — a financial news outlet — within the same neighborhood containing other news and business journalism outlets, including CNBC, which is owned by the cable giant. Bloomberg had complained to the FCC that Comcast was favoring its own channels at the expense of Bloomberg.

How does a blind person find what to “watch” on a TV with 200 channels and 46,000 video-on-demand choices of movies, shows and clips? Tom Wlodkowski, a blind executive at Comcast Corp., thinks he has the answer: a talking TV channel guide.

The NBCUniversal chief’s previous deal, made in late 2009, was due to expire at the end of 2014. Now it will run through August 2018, with an 18% increase in his base salary to $2.6 million while his annual cash bonus opportunity stays at 300% of his base salary, the company says in an SEC filing.

Fox announced Thursday that its new national sports network — Fox Sports 1 — is set to bow Saturday with all major cable, satellite and telco TV operators, including late holdouts DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner Cable. FS1 will be distributed to about 90 million U.S. households, according to Fox.

Avoiding the carriage disputes that threatened to undermine their Aug, 17 launch, national cable channels Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2 are on target for distribution deals with Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV and Dish, according to sources. While the ancestors for those channels, Speed and Fuel, had existing agreements with the distributors, terms had to be renegotiated given the higher profiles that FS1 and FS2 will have nationally.

The increase to $1.7 billion was driven by a 13% increase in advertising revenue, primarily reflecting higher primetime ratings at the NBC broadcast network, and higher retransmission consent fees.

Comcast Corp. says Aereo, a company that distributes broadcast programming on the Web, violates its copyrights, but according to often-contrarian analyst Richard Greenfield of BTIG, the cable giant is fighting the tech firm at its own peril. Comcast has argued that the Web TV company distributes its content without permission, which hurts its broadcaster, NBC Universal. CBS, Fox and ABC have all made similar legal arguments. But Aereo could help Comcast’s pay-TV business, Greenfield said in a note to clients Monday.

The cloud-based X2 features set-top boxes four times faster, three times smaller, but use half the power of traditional cable boxes. “The cloud is a game changer,” said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in DC just shot down the FCC’s ruling last year that would have required Comcast to take Tennis Channel off of an extra-fee sports tier so it could compete more equally with the cable giant’s Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network.

Time Warner, Viacom and Comcast all saw growth in their cable network businesses, thanks to distribution fees they charge cable and satellite TV service providers for rights to carry their channels on subscribers’ lineups. The boost in television helped make up for weakness at two of the three major movie studios that reported results Wednesday.

An 18.5% drop in the company’s Broadcast Television segment revenue was driven by lower primetime ratings at the NBC broadcast network and lower content licensing revenue.

Comcast has decided to start encrypting its basic cable signal. If you have a cable box, this will mean absolutely nothing to you, but if you run the coaxial cable straight out of the wall into the back of the TV, you’re going to have to get a digital converter from the cable provider. Or possibly start paying for cable.

Comcast Corp. CEO Brian Roberts ranks in the middle of the media pack in terms of salary and perks. Roberts received $29 million in compensation last year, an increase of 8% over 2011, according to a regulatory filing by the company Friday. One of Roberts’ ranking lieutenants, Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal, got a double-digit bump, receiving $26.3 million in compensation in 2012, an 11.3% increase over the previous year.

The cable operator has set a “watchathon” for the last week of March during which broadcast and cable networks will make all of a season’s episodes available for people to catch up on viewing.

The cable giant is adopting a policy similar to that in place at NBCUniversal, which bars commercials for weapons or fireworks.

Revenue from the segment increased 7.9% to $2 billion, driven by strong primetime ratings at the NBC network, as well as higher political ad money at the owned stations.

Comcast said Tuesday that it’s buying the remaining 49% of NBCUniversal from General Electric for $16.7 billion, doing so several years early. Investors thought the move was good for both companies — GE because it got cash for its stake earlier than expected and Comcast because it is seen to be a good use of its cash. Comcast’s decision to buy the rest of NBCU ahead of schedule represents a resounding vote of confidence in the future of TV, even as the growth of Internet video reshapes the entertainment landscape.

The new accord includes Fox Broadcasting and Fox Television Stations programming in major cities and provides entertainment, sports and local news to Comcast Xfinity TV customers in and out of the home.

Telecom giant Comcast said its Xfinity TV Player app now allows customers to download TV shows and movies from the Web onto their mobile devices.

Comcast rolled out a new logo Monday that drops the red C in favor of the NBC peacock. The new logo is a big change for the big C, removing the company’s bright red for a rainbow and changing the font as well.

Bernstein Research raised its earnings-per-share forecast for the cable giant this morning after analysts Craig Moffett and Todd Juenger concluded that NBCUniversal “has gone from albatross to a key part of the bull case” for Comcast — and could generate an additional $1.5 billion in annual cash flow by 2016.

Two class-action disputes divided the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday as companies looked to build on the victory won last year when the justices threw out a nationwide sex-bias suit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In one, the court’s Republican-appointed majority questioned efforts to press an antitrust suit against Comcast Corp. Comcast is seeking to stop an antitrust suit that seeks $875 million on behalf of as many as two million Philadelphia-area customers.

A federal court judge’s decision to side with Comcast and not enforce a tentative settlement in a class-action lawsuit will set the stage for arguments before the Supreme Court. Behrend v. Comcast, originally filed in 2003, alleges that Comcast’s “clustering” of systems through swaps with other cable operators had given the media giant too much power to increase cable rates and exclude competitors in the Philadelphia area.

The owner of the business news cable channel has written a letter to the FCC asking it to force Comcast to comply with a previous order to move Bloomberg TV closer to rival CNBC.

Netflix could make a big impression by acquiring Starz after its spin-off, but a deal seems unlikely

Improved performance at the owned stations is offset by content licensing expenses.

The FCC upheld a judge’s ruling against Comcast, saying the cable giant discriminated against the Tennis Channel by putting it in a less-advantageous tier of service compared to Comcast’s own sports channels.

Comcast and Disney/ABC Television Group announced that Xfinity TV customers can now access three new authenticated TV+ products — WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney XD and WATCH Disney Junior — […]