NBCUniversal announced its sixth carriage deal in about
eight weeks Thursday, this time with the National Rural Telecommunications
Cooperative, a group that represents more than 1,500 rural utilities and
affiliates in 48 states.
According to NBCU, the deal includes expansive rights to
carry the Olympics, on-demand content from the programming giant's cable and
broadcast properties and TV Everywhere-like authentication rights that give
customers access to live channels on several different platforms in and out of
the home.
This is the sixth carriage deal NBCU has reached since
November, when it announced a comprehensive agreement with Cablevision
Systems. Since then the programming giant has inked deals with Mediacom
Communications, the National
Cable Television Cooperative, Suddenlink
Communications and Verizon
Communications. "This agreement continues our successful and long standing
partnership with NRTC and underscores our commitment to TV Everywhere," said
NBCU executive vice president, content distribution Matt Bond in a statement.
"I'm pleased NRTC appreciates the value our strong portfolio of broadcast
stations, cable networks and Olympics coverage we deliver to their
subscribers."
The deal also covers retransmission consent for NBC and Telemundo owned
stations and continued carriage of all NBCUniversal's cable networks including,
Bravo, cloo, Chiller, CNBC, CNBC World, E!, G4, MSNBC, mun2, NBC Sports
Network, Oxygen, Sprout, Style, Syfy, Golf Channel, Telemundo Media, Universal
HD and USA.
"We're excited to expand our TV Everywhere offering,
MyTimeTV, with content from NBCUniversal's diverse networks," said Madeleine Forrer, NRTC's VP of video services, in a statement. "This summer,
our members participated in NBC Universal's Olympics authenticated,
multiplatform offering, and we're happy to continue this relationship with
expanded content rights from NBCUniversal's networks, including both
authenticated live channels and FVOD as well as program restart."
