The Hits Just Keep On Coming

Comcast has been taking it on the chin lately, particularly in the Nation’s Capitol.

That may come from being the biggest target as the nation’s largest cable operators, but that is cold comfort.

There was the FCC’s first-ever fines for unattributed VNRs that were levied against the operator–it says it did nothing wrong. Given that most of the complaints were filed against TV stations, and most of those came months before ones lodged against Comcast, that gave some D.C. folks pause to wonder whether the company were being singled out by a cable-unfriendly FCC.

The FCC said no, it was because Comcast wouldn’t give it an extension of its deadline on dealing with the complaints.

That followed the FCC’s decision several weeks before that The America Channel was a regional sports network and could invoke arbigtration in negotiations with Comcast. Comcast had argued, and still does, that it is a national, rather than a regional network.

That followed being named as one of a number of cable operators in a class action lawsuit against program bundling.

That followed an FCC decision denying Comcast for a second time a general waiver of the FCC’s deadline for separating the security and surfing functions of cable set-top boxes.

That followed…. Well, you get my point.

This week came the story in our sister publication, Multichannel News, that a new blog has been launched, that allows Comcast customers to vent about service.

Also surfacing this week was a story from August that made the morning newscast on WMAL(AM) Washington about a 75-year-old woman with heart trouble who took a hammer to some Comcast office equipment at a payment center in the D.C. exurb of Manassas over what she said was frustration in changing service from Verizon to Comcast’s triple play.

According to a local newspaper account, Comcast said that one unsatisfied customer was too many. I would add that it is wise to pay attention to the ones with the hammers.

Well, at least Comcast wasn’t the subject of a Supreme Court case on fudging the books, as was Charter Communications this week, another one of the nation’s largest cable companies.

And so it goes.