BOCA RATON, FLA. — The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday (7/29) sent a letter to the CEO of NBCUniversal parent Comcast alerting him that the agency is launching a formal inquiry focused on whether NBC affiliation agreements — and Comcast’s practice in negotiations and affirming these deals — are in conflict with station owner independence and their stations’ public service obligations.
News of the letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts first surfaced in a report distributed Tuesday afternoon by Newsmax, the Chris Ruddy-owned right-leaning cable news organization based in Palm Beach County.
The letter, which was yet posted to Carr’s FCC.gov page where a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger can be found, comes after a complaint was made against NBC for an appearance on Saturday Night Live by Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election in which she was the Democrat’s candidate for Commander-in-Chief.
As reported by Newsmax, Carr’s letter speaks of the FCC’s desire to examine “threats to terminate long-standing affiliations unless stations accept stringent financial and operational terms, as well as restrictions on digital carriage and local content decisions.”
Quoting the letter, Carr wrote:
“For years, the FCC has stepped away from enforcing critical regulations designed to protect localism. This retreat has encouraged large national programmers like Comcast to exert more control over licensed local broadcast stations, eroding the ability of local media to serve their communities.”
FCC rules disallow network contracts that inhibit a broadcast station’s right to not air programming deemed unsuitable, for example, and stations are often locked into making independent scheduling decisions. One NBC affiliate, WDIV-4 in Detroit, has been the subject of persistent rumors that it will drop the network and go all-in with its “LOCAL 4” branding. However, RBR+TVBR believes NBCUniversal’s relationship with the Graham Media Group flagship is on solid ground.
That’s not the case with ABC and BH Media’s WPLG-10 in Miami, which is going independent in days. The same can be said of WANF-46 in Atlanta, which Gray Media will be taking independent following CBS News & Stations’ departure.
Specific to NBCU is its OTT platform, Peacock, which Carr references in the letter sent to Roberts. There’s also the Comcast MVPD platform and cable TV channels along with O&Os. With an asset portfolio perhaps second in North America only to Canada’s Rogers Communications, Carr is considering all of these assets as “contributing factors that raise potential conflicts with local affiliates’ public interest obligations,” Newsmax says.
What does this mean for NBCU? The FCC’s Media Bureau, led by Erin Boone, has been tasked to gather and review Comcast’s affiliate agreements for both its NBC and Telemundo stations. Gray Media is a large Telemundo affiliate station owner.
