FCC Seeks Lots More Data From NBCU

On May 21, the Federal Communications Commission issued an "information and discovery" request to NBC Universal asking for specific information (59 separate requests, with multiple parts to many of those) on everything from an organizational chart for all of its divisions to a timeline for how it will divest KWHY-TV Los Angeles and take care of a newspaper/station issue involving KXAS-TV Fort Worth. Online video distribution gets a lot of attention.

There are plenty of questions about delivery of video both via traditional means and over the Internet, including all discussion with online video distributors (Boxee, YouTube) and why they did or did not come to a deal. It also wants "all strategic plans, policies, analyses, and presentations prepared for, presented to, reviewed by, discussed by, or considered by the company's board of directors or the company's executive management, or any member thereof, relating to the Company's entry into the distribution of video programming over the Internet. The deadline for the request is June 11. The FCC has stopped the clock on the merger review (after only 29 days), but plans to restart it June 3.