Bloomberg Fires Back in Neighborhooding Complaint

Says Comcast misstated its position, asks FCC to lift partial stay

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/10/2012 2:04:36 PM

Bloomberg has told the FCC that Comcast mischaracterized its position and again asked the FCC to reconsider its Aug. 14 decision to stay a portion of its order that Comcast include Bloomberg TV in news neighborhoods on its systems.

That came in a filing with the FCC Wednesday, Bloomberg's response to Comcast's comments on Bloomberg's request that the FCC reconsider that stay.

The bureau stayed the portion of the order relating to Comcast channel lineups with only one standard-definition news neighborhood below channel 100. Bloomberg says it doesn't support that stay and that Comcast had no basis to claim that it did. "The Commission should immediately reverse the stay and direct Comcast to neighborhood Bloomberg TV on [those] channel lineups," said Bloomberg in the filing.

The FCC back in May ordered Comcast to reposition the Bloomberg Television business news channel into "news neighborhoods" in 106 headends -- spanning the 35 largest U.S. markets -- to comply with a condition of the FCC's approval of the NBCUniversal deal.

It issued a clarification of the order Aug. 14 that included the partial stay.

Those decisions have been interspersed by a series of legal moves and counter-moves by Comcast and Bloomberg. Comcast says the NBCU condition does not mean that Comcast is required to relocate Bloomberg TV to three-and-four channel groupings "almost" all of which were in place "years before" the NBCU deal, which is why it is fighting the FCC decision. Bloomberg says it has been trying to avoid a condition it agreed to as part of the deal.