Justice Department to Probe Comcast/NBCU Deal

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The Department of Justice will be the U.S. agency handling the review of Comcast Corporation’s planned venture with GE to assume control of NBC Universal.

Announced in December, the agreement will see Comcast owning 51 percent of a new company that will include its own cable networks, such as E! and Style!, as well as NBC Universal. While the Justice Department is expected to give a greenlight to the merger—which must also be sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission—there are likely to be conditions attached.

Watchdogs are concerned about the deal’s effects on competition in the market, given Comcast’s dominance as a pay-TV platform. The Justice Department is likely to impose conditions that would prevent Comcast from denying rival platforms access to the NBCU channels, and that would stop the cable operator from shutting out smaller independent services. Yesterday, the Tennis Channel filed a complaint against Comcast with the FCC, alleging that it is violating program carriage rules by favoring networks it owns and discriminating against unaffiliated services. According to the complaint, Comcast isolates Tennis Channel on a premium sports tier received by a small fraction of Comcast subscribers, while it carries Comcast-owned networks that compete with Tennis Channel on basic tiers available to far more subscribers at no additional charge.