What Bloomberg Gains From the Comcast-NBC Deal
You might think that a stand-alone media company like Bloomberg would be apprehensive about NBC being scooped up by a giant cable provider like Comcast. In fact, it was worried about the deal's consequences to competition, which is why it lobbied hard for a provision within the Federal Communications Commission's conditions that would benefit its business news channel. The Bloomberg TV channel is the most significant competitor to NBC's CNBC business news channel. Brian Stelter from the New York Times Media Decoder reports:
Broadly, the Federal Communication Commission said that Comcast must not favor its own content over competitors' content on its cable systems. Specifically, the commission said that "if Comcast neighborhoods its news (including business news) channels, it must include all unaffiliated news (or business news) channels in that neighborhood."
In the deal, Comcast will own CNBC, a rival to Bloomberg TV. Essentially, Bloomberg wanted to make sure that if Comcast clusters together news channels, Comcast won't leave Bloomberg TV out of that group.
In other words, Comcast can't put CNBC on cable channel 25 and Bloomberg News on channel 1385, but must put it on a nearby channel number. Obviously, this benefits Bloomberg TV if a CNBC watcher clicks through to nearby channels to see the content provided by competing news channels.
Read the full story at Media Decoder.
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