Things aren't getting any chummier between Bloomberg and Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA); in fact, one could say things are getting a bit feistier.
Bloomberg claims Comcast is required to put its Bloomberg TV channel in the same neighborhood as Comcast's CNBC and has filed a complaint with the FCC pushing that point. Meanwhile, as that gets hashed out, the financial news service has instituted a new marketing push maintaining that claims, unlike its competition (CNBC), it's "fiercely independent, fiercely rational." Other news purveyors have "become the home for radical opinions," Trevor Fellows, head of ad sales for Bloomberg Media Group.
Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian Roberts didn't get into the hysteria of the news station battles but maintained his company's insistence that Bloomberg has not right to be moved to any station neighborhood and that is was not part of any agreement with the FCC.
"Whatever the condition was, it was set up based on market forces that pre-date the merger," Roberts said. "Whether by choosing to merge that should cause us to disrupt a lot of consumers by putting (a channel) over here, move something over there or move something somewhere else, it is the single most noisy thing to do. None of that was done with the kind of market conditions they potentially described."
If Bloomberg wins its case, the idea of neighborhoods of like-minded cable networks could have wide-ranging implications for other networks who could demand similar treatment from Comcast and other service providers.
For more:
- Business Insider has this story
- MediaBistro has this story
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