Tennis Channel Asks FCC to Review Carriage Call

Having exhausted its court appeal options, the Tennis Channel wants the Federal Communications Commission to take another crack at justifying its decision that Comcast discriminated against Tennis Channel in favor of its own, co-owned sports networks Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network.

The FCC upheld Tennis Channel's program carriage complaint, but the DC Federal Appeals court vacated that decision, saying the facts did not support discrimination, and the Supreme Court declined to review that lower court ruling.
“[E]ven under the Commission’s interpretation of § 616 (the correctness of which we assume for purposes of this decision), the Commission has failed to identify adequate evidence of unlawful discrimination," the court concluded, which would seem to be definitive. But Tennis has petitioned the FCC asking it to test Comcast's actions against three "tests" the court suggested "may" establish that Comcast discriminated.

[March 11]