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A little less biased than a TC Press Release - here's the NY Times report on the battle:


Tennis Channel Takes Feud With Comcast to F.C.C.
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: January 6, 2010

The Tennis Channel filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission late Tuesday accusing Comcast of keeping it on a digital sports tier while making the Golf Channel and Versus, channels that Comcast owns, far more widely available.

In its filing, the Tennis Channel said that Comcast’s “discriminatory refusal” to treat it fairly “is harming the network’s ability to compete in the cable marketplace.”

Comcast said in a statement that its 2005 contract with the Tennis Channel allows it to carry the network “on many different tiers, including the Sports Entertainment Package, where we currently offer it to our customers.”

The cable giant said it was “fully honoring the terms of our agreement” with the Tennis Channel and called the complaint “groundless.” The sports tier also includes the CBS College Sports Network, Fox College Sports and the NFL Red Zone.The Tennis Channel’s complaint is similar to one filed with the F.C.C. by the NFL Network against Comcast in 2008 after the cable operator dropped it from a broadly distributed level to its sports tier; the case was dropped when the league and Comcast came to an agreement that made the network more widely available.

Distribution on Comcast, which has about 24 million customers, is crucial for networks eager to maximize their revenue from monthly subscriber fees.

The sports tier is bought by about 2.3 million Comcast customers who pay $5 to $8 a month while while Golf and Versus, older networks, are distributed to virtually all of Comcast’s 24 million subscribers.

Tennis wants to expand well past its full-time universe of 25 million subscribers but only does so substantially during the Grand Slam tournaments. For the French and United States Opens, special previews make it available to more than 50 million people. For Wimbledon and the Australian Open, it is available to about 30 million.

The complaint says that Comcast refused to broaden the Tennis Channel’s availability during negotiations last year despite having added coverage of all four Grand Slam tournaments and creating a high-definition channel since the original contract with Comcast was signed. In trying to prove its case of “differential treatment,” the network cited a statement by Stephen Burke, Comcast’s president, saying that it views its own networks like “siblings” but networks it does not own as “strangers.”

Last summer, a feud over the Tennis Channel’s distribution on Cablevision prevented it from being seen by the cable operator’s customers during the United States Open. Cablevision won the acrimonious battle and carries the channel on its digital sports tier.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/sp.../07tennis.html