Comcast Pleased With First Round
Following two congressional hearings Thursday on Comcast's proposed acquisition of NBC Universal, Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen said in a blog post Friday that "we feel that we took an important step forward" in the firms' efforts to gain approval of their deal from federal regulators. In his blog post, Cohen offered a point-by-point recap of the hearings, saying that "we think that Brian [Roberts] and Jeff [Zucker] were able to articulate why this transaction is pro-consumer and strongly in the public interest."
The House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee held a morning hearing on the Comcast-NBC deal, while the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held an afternoon session examining the proposed merger. Comcast Chairman CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker appeared at both hearings.
During the House hearing, lawmakers appeared generally split along party lines over the proposed union of Comcast, the nation's largest video service provider, and NBC Universal, the country's fourth-largest entertainment company, CongressDaily reported. Despite this, several Republicans called for approval, while the worst thing Democrats could say was that the transaction should be closely scrutinized and heavily conditioned.
At the Senate Hearing, Zucker and Roberts received a tongue-lashing over the consequences of their proposed merger from Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who worked as a writer and performer in years past for NBC's "Saturday Night Live" show. Franken questioned whether the companies would live up to the public-interest commitments they've made to federal regulators to win approval of the merger, according to CongressDaily.
In his recap of the hearings, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge claimed Zucker had "told a little fib" when he told House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., that the management of the free, online programming site Hulu, owned partially by NBC, decided to block access last year to users of the online site Boxee because it was illegally taking Hulu content. Feld argued in a blog post that Zucker acknowledged in a May news interview that he had a hand in Hulu's decision because he was concerned about NBC content being streamed via Hulu to television sets.
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