Inside Tennis Channel's fight with Comcast

Tennis Funnel topper Ken Solomon, center, with Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova within the U.S. Open this past year.Inside the nation's capital, Golf Funnel can be found on funnel 11 in the Comcast selection Tennis Funnel reaches 735. It may seem it is simply an indication of the Beltway, but to Ken Solomon, in charge of Tennis Funnel, the disparity is certainly an injustice carried out out nationwide. And he's succeeding to be able to convince authorities physiques, in this particular situation an administrative law judge in the FCC, the Goliath in the cable biz has discriminated against one of the Davids on the planet. Comcast has Golf Funnel, but doesn't have a very stake inside the individually possessed Tennis Funnel. The problem, Solomon states, is about greater than making sure a legal court can get equal footing while using club, but in the evolution of cable programming itself, where it's harder for indie systems to deal with people possessed by conglomerates. Tennis Funnel, according to him, remains "thrust in it of moving the flag for nearly any independent voice." "Inside the cable world, there is a time that it stops being a free of charge market," Solomon states. "Inside the cable world, we blew with this point a really very long time ago." Clearly, that isn't how Comcast sees it. Although administrative law judge Richard Sipple ruled in December that Comcast reaches breach of Section 616 in the communications act -- a "program carriage" law controlling cable provider control over channels through which they don't own a stake -- they think the supply continues to be familiar with rewrite the regards to a contract private contract between parties. The regards to that 15-year agreement, Comcast highlights, gives Comcast the legal right to carry Tennis Funnel "on any tier, like the sports tier." Furthermore they condition that Tennis Funnel filed the complaint after seeking bigger carriage, including offering cable operators equity stakes, but Comcast declined. The very best fight is finished when Comcast must immediately follow Sipple's ruling. Although FCC staffers have mentioned that Comcast must implement it now, the cabler states it shouldn't have to until it exhausts other administrative remedies, like taking their situation fully FCC. Carrying this out now, it states, might be "time-consuming, complex and pricey to implement." In addition, it may be confusing to clients it reshuffled its make to produce room for Tennis Funnel inside the lower tiers, then ultimately won within the claim on appeal. "Comcast's First Amendment rights will probably be infringed, as having the ability to speak through its systems will conditioned on bigger distribution of Tennis Funnel, an option that both usurps Comcast's editorial discretion and penalizes its speech," the business mentioned inside an FCC filing. Solomon thinks the liberty of expression argument is "specious." "We didn't awaken and pressure Comcast to put Tennis Funnel on air,Inch he mentioned. "They selected to get this done on their own volition. What they have to accomplish, once they make that determination, they have to give to us fair treatment once they get similar situated systems." Solomon, who before Tennis Funnel founded Fine Living and was leader of Universal Television, talks concentrating on the same showman's eagerness in regards to the situation he is doing in the channel's capacity to win rights to major competitions. Tennis Funnel, founded in 2003, is possessed having a consortium of traders including Apollo Partners, Bain Capital Endeavors, DND Capital Partners, sports management firm IMG and Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. According to Derek Baine, SNL Kagan senior media analyst, the funnel has close to $100 million in annual revenue and went to the black this season. Although a completely new positioning on Comcast systems could eventually lead to an uptick in advertising dollars, in addition to a large rise in clients, the problem continues to be snapped up on by other individually possessed channels like a kind of hangover around-extended controlling wrangling that introduced for the government's approval of Comcast's along with NBCU. Bloomberg LP, which along with Tennis Funnel will be a critic in the NBCU transaction, snapped up on Sipple's ruling to call concentrate on its FCC complaint against Comcast inside the positioning of the business funnel within the same "neighborhood" as news channels, one of the conditions situated around the transaction. Again, Comcast disagrees. Prior to the FCC and Justice Department gave the merger the greenlight, it had vowed to incorporate 10 individually possessed channels towards the selection over the following eight years. But to Solomon, it's less determined by adding new channels but finding them. There's a voluminous situation file inside the criminal history round the situation, but according to him it is kind of grade-school clear to see: "Everything you do by yourself, you must do for some individuals.In . Contact Ted Manley at ted.manley@variety.com