On the Ropes—Court of Appeals Fires Away at FCC in Comcast-Tennis Case

The FCC’s 1st decision finding that a cable operator violated program carriage rules appeared in jeopardy Mon morning, with a 3-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals hammering the Commission with questions about its ’12 ruling that Comcast discriminated against Tennis Channel (Cfax, 7/25). It’s never over until the court issues its opinion, which could take 2-4 months, but the line of questioning at Mon’s oral arguments didn’t seem to bode well for the FCC. Here’s where the FCC’s case could be in trouble.

More top stories in today’s CableFAX Daily:

 

Mon marked the start of the implementation of the Copyright Alert System (CAS) designed to combat P2P piracy. Here is what participating content providers will be doing over the next few days.

 

One outcome of the voluntary Set-Top Box Energy Conservation Agreement that NCTA and CEA announced in Dec is the creation of a steering committee to ensure that efforts are on track (Cfax, 12/7). During the 1st committee meeting last week, these officials were elected.

 

Former Time Warner Cable and Scripps Nets exec Lynne Costantini has joined Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze as pres, biz dev as the channel ramps up carriage efforts.