The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau seeks comment on a Mediacom petition (CD July 25 p13) that asks the FCC to restrict programmers from requiring bundling and other concessions during negotiations for their content, said a bureau public notice Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1s4VNsc). The public notice, included in Wednesday’s Daily Digest, gives 30 days to comment. An FCC decision to open a rulemaking in reaction to the petition would be a concern for content companies, said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant in an email to investors Wednesday. He suggested it might not be coincidental that the Mediacom petition was put out for comment on the same day that Chairman Tom Wheeler sent a letter to Time Warner Cable over the company’s Los Angeles sports programming dispute (CD July 30 p7). (See separate report above in this issue.)

Comcast’s proposed deal to sell Time Warner Cable customers to Charter Communications, if Comcast/TWC is approved, would strengthen Charter by enhancing and rationalizing its geographic footprint, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge and Executive Vice President-Government Affairs Catherine Bohigian told all five FCC members and their aides in separate meetings July 24, said an ex parte notice (http://bit.ly/WLCmKB) posted in docket 14-28 Monday. The deal would also increase Charter’s scale, “ensuring that customers in the systems acquired by Charter will be served by a stronger competitor,” the filing said. Reclassifying broadband under Title II to approve net neutrality regulations would be “both unnecessary and harmful” and “would upend the current climate of regulatory predictability,” as well as harm private investment and ultimately consumers, Charter said.

The FCC should grant Comcast a waiver of its neighborhooding order to let the cable operator fulfill the terms of its settlement with Bloomberg, that programmer said in a waiver petition posted Tuesday to docket 11-104 (http://bit.ly/1s24tzG). Under the terms of the settlement, Comcast has agreed to place Bloomberg Television alongside Comcast’s competing business channel CNBC in many of its systems. In systems where CNBC is in the “news neighborhood” of other news channel, this complies with the neighborhooding order, Bloomberg said. In other systems, where CNBC is outside the news neighborhood, the settlement agreement conflicts with the neighborhooding order. “In Bloomberg’s view, proximity to CNBC, its chief competitor, is preferable to placement in a news neighborhood that lacks CNBC,” said Bloomberg. To allow that to happen, the commission should waive the order for the “small number” of Comcast systems where CNBC is not in the news neighborhood, Bloomberg said. Comcast supports the request, the petition said.

Comcast and the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) renewed a multiyear agreement for Comcast’s headend in the Sky National Authorization Service (NAS). The agreement complements NCTC’s success in giving its members the opportunity to buy universal digital transport adapters, set-top boxes and CableCARD devices from a range of manufacturers, said Comcast and NCTC Monday in a news release. NAS also gives NCTC members centrally managed options “that can reduce the costs for offering digital video and IP services to their customers,” they said.

Bright House Networks chose BlackArrow to manage the execution of dynamic ad insertion in its on-demand and multiscreen TV products. Bright House will use BlackArrow “to increase the availability of advertising inventory for local and regional markets in the future,” BlackArrow said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1rLgfk6). Bright House will now be able to deliver timely and relevant ads across its on-demand platforms, BlackArrow said.

The FCC Media Bureau granted a waiver to Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, allowing them to defer the must-carry request and channel position election for KVNV-TV Middletown Township in New Jersey. The cable systems are already carrying WFSB-TV Hartford, Connecticut, or another station at the Channel 3 position, “and it is not technically feasible to position a second station there as well,” the bureau said in a letter posted in Monday’s Daily Digest (http://bit.ly/1pmLG0S). The multichannel video programming distributors can’t carry KVNV on Channel 3 without repositioning WFSB and possible other programming services, it said. The waiver allows the MVPDs to defer carriage until 90 days from the date of a final decision on the station’s virtual channel, the bureau said.

The Netflix app is fully integrated in the TiVo service distributed by Cable One. It allows customers “to easily search, browse, and view an ever-expanding selection of commercial-free TV shows and movies” that Netflix offers, Cable One said Monday in a news release. Netflix and Google credited Cable One as a top ISP for streaming content without interruption, Cable One said.

Charter Communications will begin to buy out the early termination fees of customers wishing to switch to Charter Business services from their previous ISPs, Charter announced in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1kcv4dw). The offer would prevent early termination fees from discouraging prospective customers from switching, the release said.

The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) and 20 other California nonprofits urged the FCC in a joint filing Tuesday to “hold Comcast accountable to improve its affordable home Internet program and expand the service to include all low-income residents” as the FCC reviews the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable (TWC) merger. The groups urged the FCC to require Comcast to make all low-income households eligible for its Internet Essentials program instead of just those with schoolchildren. Comcast should also set goals for raising the percentage of eligible households that hold Internet Essentials subscriptions and coordinate with states that are major Comcast/TWC markets on closing the digital divide, the groups said. Only 11 percent of eligible households in California are currently Internet Essentials subscribers, the groups said. The FCC should also require Comcast to establish an advisory oversight committee on the Internet Essentials program and require Comcast to offer stand-alone Internet access at a reasonable rate, the groups said (http://bit.ly/WETP76).

The FCC should institute a rulemaking to “restore balance to the video marketplace” by limiting programmers’ ability to bundle channels, give discounts to large providers, control tier placement, or interfere with access to their content on the Internet, said Mediacom in a petition for expedited rulemaking filed Monday. The multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) marketplace has changed from being “dominated by cable operators to one in which the programmers (both broadcast and non-broadcast) clearly have the upper hand and are able to engage in coercive practices,” said the Mediacom petition. To address the problem, the FCC should allow MVPDs to offer limited a la carte programming of high priced content, or compel programmers to offer all MVPDs the same bundles they offer large carriers or unbundled networks. The commission should also prohibit blocking of Internet access as a negotiating tactic and require programmers to seek waivers justifying volume discounts, the petition said. “The Commission has the statutory authority to address the problems afflicting the video programming marketplace,” Mediacom said. “What it needs is the will to do so."