NBCU Strikes Affiliate Deal With NRTC

Agreement covers Olympics, broadcast and cable rights

By Mike Farrell, Multichannel News -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/3/2013 12:18:25 PM

NBCUniversal announced its sixth carriage deal in about eight weeks Thursday, this time with the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, a group that represents more than 1,500 rural utilities and affiliates in 48 states.

According to NBCU, the deal includes expansive rights to carry the Olympics, on-demand content from the programming giant's cable and broadcast properties and TV Everywhere-like authentication rights that give customers access to live channels on several different platforms in and out of the home.

This is the sixth carriage deal NBCU has reached since November, when it announced a comprehensive agreement with Cablevision Systems.  Since then the programming giant has inked deals with Mediacom Communications,  the National Cable Television Cooperative, Suddenlink Communications and Verizon Communications. "This agreement continues our successful and long standing partnership with NRTC and underscores our commitment to TV Everywhere," said NBCU executive vice president, content distribution Matt Bond in a statement. "I'm pleased NRTC appreciates the value our strong portfolio of broadcast stations, cable networks and Olympics coverage we deliver to their subscribers."

The deal also covers retransmission consent for NBC and Telemundo owned stations and continued carriage of all NBCUniversal's cable networks including, Bravo, cloo, Chiller, CNBC, CNBC World, E!, G4, MSNBC, mun2, NBC Sports Network, Oxygen, Sprout, Style, Syfy, Golf Channel, Telemundo Media, Universal HD and USA.

"We're excited to expand our TV Everywhere offering, MyTimeTV, with content from NBCUniversal's diverse networks," said Madeleine Forrer, NRTC's VP of video services, in a statement. "This summer, our members participated in NBC Universal's Olympics authenticated, multiplatform offering, and we're happy to continue this relationship with expanded content rights from NBCUniversal's networks, including both authenticated live channels and FVOD as well as program restart."