The FCC continues to look at online program
delivery in the context of the Comcast/NBCU merger.
According to a filing with the FCC, an attorney
for Hulu met with a member of the FCC's General Counsel's office to
follow-up on questions raised by the FCC in an Oct. 13 meeting about quality
about of service and content protection of online video distribution.
That Oct. 13 meeting, about the relationship of
"linear and online content licensing and distribution" was itself a
follow-up to a Sept. 21 meeting on the same subject at the request of the
commission.
Hulu is part-owned by NBCU, and Comcast in a
meeting with FCC staffers in August reiterated that it has "no
intention" of changing NBC's decision to make some of its content
available for free on Hulu, and "expects" that the NBC programming
now available on the site will not migrate elsewhere, though it also advised
that given the changing marketplace, it would be "unwise to set in stone
any plans with respect to putting content online in any particular
fashion."
In a letter to FCC Chairman
Julius Genachowski last month, The American Cable Association, DirecTV and
DISH said the commission needed to take Fox's blocking of content on Hulu
into account when considering the proposed merger.
"If FOX, an entity with no affiliation to a distribution platform,
was willing to deny certain viewers access to its online content in order to
gain a negotiating advantage, a vertically integrated Comcast/NBCU would have
an even greater incentive and ability to take similar action," they
argued.
