NFL and Comcast Start Fighting Again

NFL Network plans to file a program-access complaint with the FCC over the nation's largest cable operator's decision to place the network on a sports tier.

"After months of unproductive efforts by network executives to make NFL Network and its popular football programming available on a fair basis to the 24.2 million subscriber homes served by Comcast systems, NFL Network has concluded that it has no choice but to bring a complaint under the Cable Act of 1992," the network said in a statement announcing the complaint.

Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast's director of corporate communications and government affairs, said the cable operator makes "the NFL Network available to all of our customers on a tier of service that the NFL agreed to by contract."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.