FCC Requests More Information From Comcast, Charter, TWC
The FCC wants more information from Charter Communications, Comcast and Time Warner Cable on their cable systems, subscribers, dealings with other companies and many other details, said letters sent to the companies from Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake (http://bit.ly/1toXNNC). The bureau requires “additional information, documents and clarifications of certain matters” to decide whether Comcast’s (http://bit.ly/1njTwoH) plan to buy TWC (http://bit.ly/VIb1YD) and its companion divestiture to Charter (http://bit.ly/1q2W0wc) is in the public interest, Lake said Thursday. The companies have to Sept. 11 to provide the data. The initial comment period for the deal ends Monday, and more than 60,000 comments were filed in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/YKaXt7), said the FCC website.
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The letters are each accompanied by lists of detailed questions for each company that run as long as 50 pages. The questions seem designed to exhaustively outline the cable companies’ existing operations, dealings with other companies and subscribers, and probe for anticompetitive behavior, said a cable attorney who doesn’t represent any of the deal participants. The bureau asked Comcast to produce all documents related to Netflix’s Internet traffic (http://bit.ly/1njTwoH) and Comcast’s interconnection agreement, and TWC is asked to provide information and documentation on its role in the management of SportsNet LA (http://bit.ly/1wiqlfc).
"These are very probing questions that show the FCC is already skeptical of many of Comcast’s claims,” said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. “I'm glad the FCC has shown that it’s interested in giving this transaction the scrutiny it deserves.” The questions may in part be a response to political pressure facing the FCC over the deal, said a cable attorney. Exhaustively probing the companies involved gives the commission ammunition to respond to the deal’s critics, the attorney said. A request for additional information on a deal the size of Comcast/TWC won’t come as a surprise to the entities involved, but they won’t welcome the nature and extent of the questions, the attorney said. The time frame allotted to respond would be an onerous burden for most other companies, the attorney said.
A Comcast spokeswoman downplayed the significance of the information request. “This is just another standard step in the review process, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Commission as the process moves forward,” she emailed. Such requests for information are common and were also issued by the bureau during Comcast/NBCUniversal, an FCC official told us.
Comcast/TWC received 63,487 comments as of Friday, said the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System. Some organizations have already filed comments in advance of the Monday 11:59 p.m. deadline, but the vast majority come from individual commenters. It doesn’t appear that the number of commenters on Comcast/TWC will approach the 1 million mark surpassed during the net neutrality proceeding, Free Press Policy Counsel Lauren Wilson told us. “It would be nice to see the kind of effort we did on net neutrality,” Bergmayer said. Many of the comments on the proceeding are coming through links on websites belonging to groups like Free Press, and several such groups told us they were making a last-ditch push to spur commenting before the weekend. Though the volume of net neutrality comments led the FCC website to crash during that comment period (CD July 16 p1), public interest and industry officials said they didn’t think that would happen in the merger proceeding. The FCC declined to comment on any special preparations for a high volume of comments.
One party encouraging members to comment on the deal through a Web link is independent rural TV network RFD-TV, which opposes the transaction. RFD-TV CEO Patrick Gottsch said “nine out of ten” comments in the docket are from citizens protesting the deal because they're worried about its effect on the RFD-TV network, by his network’s calculation. A button on the RFD-TV website takes visitors to a page that said “Mergers are a challenge to RFD-TV” and asked viewers to comment. Gottsch said the network is running TV spots that also encourage commenting against the deal. Gottsch’s concerns are rooted in Comcast’s pulling of the network from systems in Colorado and New Mexico, and in statements made by Comcast executives that the company was primarily interested in urban areas, he told us. “Folks are concerned about Comcast having millions of subscribers and placing little value on rural programming."
The large number of individual comments makes it unlikely that all will be read by commissioners, but they still have weight, said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who now works for Common Cause. Copps was on the FCC during Comcast/NBCUniversal, and was the only vote against it. Commissioners take individual comments seriously and make it their business to know generally how the public feels about a given issue, Copps said. “They are all taken seriously.” Individual comments may have a particular weight in Comcast/TWC because its an important issue for consumers, said Bergmayer.