The Media Infocenter reports that the NFL and Comcast, the cable giant, have agreed to enter mediation to solve their dispute over which tier the NFL Network should appear on.
The mediation will focus on whether Comcast had a contractual right to place the NFL Network on a sports tier that around 2 million of Comcast’s 24.7 million subscribers buy for about $5 to $7 per month.
The NFL has refused to suspend its carriage discrimination complaint against Comcast at the FCC for the duration of the mediation. The complaint accused Comcast of favoring company-owned sports networks Golf Channel and Versus over independent channels like NFL Network. Comcast denied the charges in a June 20 filing at the FCC.
“While we are prepared to agree to mediation of the contract language dispute between us and Comcast, we expressly told the court in New York that we would not stay the FCC proceeding — which raises major issues of federal communications policy — during the mediation. Comcast is trying to persuade the FCC to stay it, but we see no good reason to do so — especially because Comcast doesn’t deny that it treats NFLN differently than sports channels that it owns,” NFL spokesman Dan Masonson said last Thursday.