OTA TV To Seek Quid Pro Quo From Comcast

Comcast will have to vow to continue refraining from any effort to kill retransmission consent as part of the price for keeping broadcasters from lobbying against the company’s $45.2-billion proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable, broadcast industry sources said Friday.

“We want to be able to continue to grow our business and to get paid for our content,” one group broadcast station executive told TVNewsCheck. “We want the right to fight for our fair share.”

Broadcasters are also likely to seek to extend a series of additional commitments that Comcast made when the FCC approved Comcast’s $30 billion acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011, broadcast sources said.

Among the key agreements that Comcast made at the time was to refrain from lobbying against retransmission consent. Other conditions imposed by the FCC prohibit Comcast from discriminating against non-NBC affiliates; bar Comcast from intervening in NBC’s negotiations of affiliation contracts with stations; and prevent Comcast from bypassing the local NBC affiliate by providing a network signal directly to a cable system in the market.

Those commitments are slated to expire by the end of 2017, according to a Comcast spokesperson.

“The existing conditions are likely to be extended or modified,” said one broadcast station executive. “People are going to line up like they did on the NBCU deal to get something for themselves for not fighting this.”

Said a Comcast spokesperson in response: “We’ll discuss all with the commission, but won’t negotiate that in the press.”

Broadcasters said that the mammoth transaction will be a mixed bag for TV stations, with Comcast getting greater leverage over group broadcasters for negotiating retrans deals.

The up side for broadcasters is that the transaction would pull the plug on TWC, which has been a notoriously tough retrans negotiator, broadcast sources agreed.

“They [TWC] are adversarial in the extreme,” said one broadcast attorney. “In fairness to Comcast, they don’t try to wage World War III in every negotiation.”

The other positive for broadcasters is that the transaction will take TWC’s big purse out of the American Television Alliance — a group TWC helped launch to lobby aggressively for retrans reform. “Getting Time Warner out of that coalition would be viewed favorably,” said a broadcast attorney.

“Much as broadcasters would like us to go away, we’re not going anywhere,” said Brian Frederick, an ATVA spokesman. “Our members are more resolved than ever.”

In a statement Thursday, Comcast said: “Broadcast stations in the acquired markets will have greater protection in their retransmission consent negotiations with Comcast in the acquired systems.”

“Nothing about this deal changes the way Comcast will deal with retransmission consent negotiations,” added a Comcast spokesperson in a statement.  “Once the deal closes TWC will be part of Comcast and thus our practices will govern.”