Comcast Chairman-CEO Brian L. Roberts and NBC Universal President-CEO Jeff Zucker are taking their case to the House of Representatives this week.
They will actually meet on Thursday, but parts of their joint prepared testimony were leaked on Tuesday.
The crux of the arguments: their $30 billion deal “will benefit consumers and encourage much needed investment” while raising no regulatory or competitive
concern.”
Consumer groups and cable competitors Wednesday are offering a new reason for government regulators to eye skeptically Comcast’s and NBC Universal’s $30 billion deal.
They charge that it would give Comcast too much control over both the MGM and Universal movie libraries.
The studios' libraries, it is claimed, could be used as a weapon to prevent rival internet-based video-download services from achieving significant share.
Comcast already owns a percentage of MGM.
Update, Thursday 2 p.m.
Barack Obama has named six new members to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, including Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer Fred Goldring, BET co-founder of Sheila Johnson, and Ovation TV chairman Ken Solomon.
They are joined by fellow appointees prominent portrait artist Chuck Close; businesswoman Pamela Joyner; and author Jhumpa Lahiri.
Vice President Joe Biden’s December meeting with Hollywood executives and government officials on intellectual-privacy issues is starting to pay some dividends.
Attorney General Eric Holder Friday announced the creation of a Justice Department Task Force on Intellectual Property as part of a new initiative to tackle piracy.
Ticketmaster must refund money for thousands of tickets it sold well above face value on14 Bruce Springsteen concerts last May and June.
The ruling was made by the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday, to settle bait-and-switch charges against the company.
Consumers charged that when they went to Ticketmaster to buy Springsteen tickets after his Super Bowl performance, they were referred to its TicketsNow subsidiary, which sells tickets at a premium of up to quadruple of face value.
Capitol Hill is going to take another look at Comcast’s deal for NBC Universal next week.
Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" may have lasted only a fraction of a second, but five years later it’s still wending its way through the courts.
Lawyers representing the Federal Communications Commission and CBS spent about 90 minutes Thursday before a three-judge panel in a Philadelphia appeals court arguing about whether the FCC’s crackdown in the Jackson case was legal.
The Roberts-Zucker tag team wanted to talk the benefits of a Comcast-NBC Universal, but the subject kept coming back to minorities and independent programming.
The Oscars may be coming to Hollywood, but in Washington it seemed Thursday night was awards night for the stars.
At the White House, President and First Lady Michele Obama awarded the 2009 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities medal to 20 honorees and organizations among them Clint Eastwood, John Williams, Rita Moreno and Bob Dylan, though neither Dylan nor Eastwood attended.
