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Executives at Comcast, the media behemoth looking to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal, have given large sums of money to presidential candidate Barack Obama and Democrats in recent years The Hill reported Saturday: Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts made more than $76,000 in political contributions to Democrats since 2006, compared to $13,500 in contributions to Republicans. Comcast vice president and top lobbyist David Cohen made about $180,000 to Democrats in the same period, compared to $12,000 to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets.org.

I’ll be the first to admit that anti-trust law is not my strong suit. The myriad implications of cable giant Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC are complexities beyond the grasp of most mortals. Legions of attorneys will put legions of children through college with the fees that this transaction will generate. This is the kind of stimulus that will inject much-needed capital into the private country club sector of the economy. I’ll be the first to admit that anti-trust law is not my strong suit. The myriad implications of cable giant Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC are complexities beyond the...

The proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal will be the first big test of the Obama administration’s stance on the hot-button issue of media consolidation. It could also put the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress at odds with a few of their largest supporters.

The chairman of Comcast endorsed the Senate health care bill in a letter Thursday to President Barack Obama, saying, "We cannot allow perfection to stand in the way of critically needed and very good legislation." "While there has been much controversy and debate over hundreds of provisions and alternatives, it is my view that the current legislation pending in the Senate provides a workable framework for this country to take an important step toward enhancing health care accessibility, promoting operational efficiencies and technological innovation, and reducing the cost of health care and the federal deficit," CEO and Chairman Brian Roberts...

The same day Comcast and General Electric announced Comcast would take control of NBC Universal, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts announced his company was supporting the health-care bill currently before the Senate. This is interesting in two ways: First, as Newsbusters points out, this move by Roberts coincides with an announcement of a merger that will likely face anti-trust scrutiny from the same Congress and administration that is pushing the health-care bill. Washington has long used the weapon of anti-trust to extract pounds of flesh from big corporations. One commissioner said yesterday, "My skepticism about the harms imposed by so few...

For General Electric's investors, yesterday's deal to combine NBC Universal with Comcast was more like a burnt-out light bulb than a bright idea. While shareholders were gratified that GE was finally selling off a business that never quite fit in with the company's industrial bent, the deal's details generated Wall Street's version of a big, fat yawn, with shares in GE falling 7 cents to $16 a share. By comparison, Comcast's stock popped 97 cents to $15.91. GE investors' muted response reflected a few factors, sources said. First, there was a sense among many investors that GE waited too long...

Jeff Immelt will no longer have entertainment flops to blame for General Electric's troubles. All during GE's worst year on record, the GE chairman and CEO, along with his numbers people, publicly cited the ups and downs of show business for helping drag GE's once-spectacular results into the mud, analysts said. With the sale of NBC Universal to Comcast, however, the 53-year-old Immelt will be left with fewer excuses if GE posts more lackluster results. "Historically, GE has used the volatility of their entertainment businesses to justify the volatility of GE's recent earnings," said Chris Murphy, managing partner at Goliath...

Here are five suggestions for how to bring the network back: 1. Part ways with Jeff Zucker -- or at least ban him from any oversight of the network. ... Take out the performance of the broadcast network, and Zucker's tenure at the Peacock has seen plenty of successes (and profits). ... But this story is about what can be done to save the NBC television network. Zucker has done far more harm than good to that part of the business. ... 2. Don't make any hard and fast rules. The last decade at NBC has been marked by a...

Here is a video report on a deal by General Electric announced early this morning that would sell a controlling interest in NBC Universal to Comcast - the nation's leading Cable TV operator. Under the agreement, Comcast would control 51% of NBC Universal, which includes the NBC Network, CNBC, MSNBC, and other entities. Below is a more in-depth discussion of the deal from CNBC's Squawk Box . . . . (VIDEOS)

A deal to merge General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal into a new joint venture with Comcast Corp.'s cable networks might solve pressing needs for both companies. But a number of financial and legal issues still hang over the talks, which are still at an early stage. While both sides hope to complete a deal, people familiar with the matter give the transaction "50-50" odds of coming together. In the deal under discussion, Comcast would contribute cash and its cable networks to NBC Universal for a 51% stake in the expanded company. NBC Universal would borrow money that would be turned...

Do you need Obama coverage 24 hours a day? In several markets, Comcast cable is launching an all-Obama, On Demand channel. (In D.C., it's channel 963). Leading up to Inauguration, the channel will offer a number of Obama-related programs, according to a release: "Barack Obama’s most famous speeches to date, from his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 through his election night victory speech in Grant Park; Barack Obama biography; Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech; a tour of the White House; and the history of Air Force One." Dish Network launched an all-Obama channel during...

Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable network, is in talks with General Electric Co. to buy a stake in NBC Universal Inc., Bloomberg News reports based on three people with knowledge of the discussions. Negotiations for the Philadelphia-based cable giant to buy about 50 percent of NBC Universal have been under way for at least two months and a deal would depend in part on Vivendi SA making a decision to sell its 20 percent holding, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private, the news service said. Comcast, with about 24 million...

This afternoon our Comcast digital cable box switched to C-span by itself while Democrats were trashing Rep. Wilson. The box would not allow us to watch any other station for approximately 15 minutes. When I called to complain Comcast technical support said that they were performing a "test of the emergency broadcast system" that switched all digital boxes in Western Washington to C-span and would not allow subscribers to watch anything else. They said that the programming taking place on C-span was merely a coincidence.

ALERT! COMCAST EMAIL USERS.... Keep an eye open for phishing emails today. I've received TWO from the same person. See headers and email below. DO NOT REPLY or FORWARD. See below how to handle these emails. Return-Path: skulekci@cox.net Received: from imta11.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net (LHLO IMTA11.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net) (76.96.62.22) by sz0165.ev.mail.comcast.net with LMTP; Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:48:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fed1rmmtao107.cox.net ([68.230.241.39]) by IMTA11.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id V0oc1c00W0ricp80B0ocp0; Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:48:49 +0000 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=03BE8P92kNoA:10 a=B2Z70H6xJSUkDJ515Yrr0Q==:17 a=7IhTD8vkESaNYZtRJxgA:9 a=-6uiuEKKr_hCM7RAdZYA:7 a=CpA5JfuKFtJpqYyoAsU9_fVhKq8A:4 a=H74sq46YGBEA:10 a=FpThlCNnufZFiDQM:21 a=xeKNeA5vEFupyxM6:21 Received: from fed1rmimpo01.cox.net ([70.169.32.71]) by fed1rmmtao107.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.00.01.00 201-2244-105-20090324) with ESMTP id <20090816124835.MYJR21470.fed1rmmtao107.cox.net@fed1rmimpo01.cox.net>; Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:48:35...

First it was a PBS station, and now Comcast has moved its MSNBC news channel from 42 to higher channels that require a digital cable box. While some subscribers are claiming it smacks of an anti-liberal conspiracy, Comcast officials disagreed. They said that it is all part of the digital revolution in television, and that it is only designed to give the cable company's viewers better service. MSNBC was available only to subscribers with the full basic service, so those who have the limited basic service would not have noticed because they never had the channel. Those who have full...

Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s recent decision to criticize the Sunoco oil company for laying off 750 workers raises a number of intriguing questions. While the governor held a press conference last week solely to excoriate Sunoco, calling the company’s decision “unconscionable,” he has been notably silent concerning the 3,000 layoffs — four times the number at Sunoco — that Comcast has executed in the past year. Since the governor’s election in 2002, SUN PAC, Sunoco’s political action committee, has contributed $55,000 to Mr. Rendell, with Sunoco employees donating an additional $2,650. During that same time period, Comcast’s PAC, its employees,...

Besides the hype over the Super Bowl game itself, many local viewers are reacting over an incident that happened during the local television broadcast of the game. For viewers of Comcast's standard definition cable signal, the final minutes of the game were interrupted by a thirty-second video clip showing pornography. We contacted KVOA, the channel carrying today's super-bowl. A representative from the KVOA Newsroom said "It was a comcast issue, not KVOA. KVOA had nothing to do with it." Our phone calls to the KVOA News Director were not returned. We also called Comcast and Kelle Maslyn, the Corporate Affairs...

Has anybody out there tried Comcast's new SmartZone e-mail? When I logged on to my e-mail today, the inbox looked different. No big deal I thought until I tried to actually OPEN my e-mail. I couldn't. Yeah, Comcast came up with this new SmartZone e-mail and it doesn't allow you to perform the most basic of e-mail functions---simply opening your e-mail. They need to change the name to DumbZone e-mail. And I'm still waiting to OPEN my e-mail.

Have you remembered to pay heed to Barack Obama worship services at his inauguration this Tuesday? If you are a Verizon customer you just might be getting an urgent reminder of this sacred duty in the form of a robocall as related by Brian Maloney of the Radio Equalizer: Yesterday, I was all set to write a smug, self-congratulatory post regarding my tremendous wisdom in finally dumping Comcast a few weeks ago for the complete Verizon Fios package, including cable. With Comcrap now establishing an all-Obama channel, isn’t it finally time to make the switch? Sadly, however, Verizon did something...

Do you need Obama coverage 24 hours a day? In several markets, Comcast cable is launching an all-Obama, On Demand channel. (In D.C., it's channel 963). Leading up to Inauguration, the channel will offer a number of Obama-related programs, according to a release: "Barack Obama’s most famous speeches to date, from his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 through his election night victory speech in Grant Park; Barack Obama biography; Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech; a tour of the White House; and the history of Air Force One."

"URGENT -- One More Philadelphia Event" read the subject line on Tuesday's blast email from Comcast executive and Democratic bigwig David L. Cohen to the party's fundraising faithful. "Just when you thought it was safe to open emails from me...I have one more request," Cohen wrote. He needs more money, as host of a fundraiser next Wednesday evening to help Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York -- President-elect Obama's choice to be Secretary of State -- retire the mountain of debt left from her failed presidential campaign. Speed is essential. Mrs. Clinton cannot raise political money once she is...

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders. Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers. At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic...

For the past 2 weeks, I have encountered a serious problem logging into Free Republic. My service provider is Comcast. If I type in the URL www.freerepublic.com, I get the following error page every time: As of last week, I could click again on the suggested weblinks and get re-routed to Free Republic. Today, even that does not work. Not does going to address down arrow for recently visited web addresses. The only way I can access the site is to go to a previous specific page of a post, and then go back to Pings. I am logged onto...

Fired “Backstage” host Barry Nolan is suing Comcast and CN8 for more than a million bucks, saying the cable company violated his constitutional right to rip Fox News bigfoot Bill O’Reilly when they sent Nolan packing last spring. “This media outlet violated the very Constitutional principles upon which the press relies for its ability to speak freely and fetter (sic) out the truth,” Nolan says in his $1.2 million lawsuit. Nolan, you may remember, went on a jihad last April when the Boston Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences chose to honor Mr. No Spin Zone...

It looks like the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is heading for a strike. Talks have broken down, attempts at mediation are being rejected, and the mogul's group, the AMPTP has been crowing about how their last offer was their last, best offer, and that nothing will get SAG a better deal. SAG doesn't think it has much choice, even if they wanted to accept the AMPTP's last offer, they just have to look at the Writers Guild of America and how the AMPTP has failed to live up to the contract that ended the Writer's Strike. Now this can end...

In 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site. ‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’ In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity...

I received this email from COMCAST this morning: Dear Comcast Subscriber: ACTION REQUIRED: Comcast has determined that your computer(s) have been used to send unsolicited email ("spam"), which is generally an indicator of a virus. For your own protection and that of other Comcast customers, we have taken steps to prevent further transmission of spam from your computer(s). Comcast.Net WebMail Users If you use a web browser to access your email, this change will not affect your service. However, it is important that you take steps to remove the virus and secure your computer(s). This can be done by using...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it will cap customers' Internet usage starting October 1, in a bid to ensure the best service for the vast majority of its subscribers. Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies. "If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may...

I do believe that liberals in this country have their tin foils hats on way too tight these days. At least, it's easy to think that over the new national conspiracy theory that lefties are all balled up over lately. You see, it is being imagined in the dim, dark recesses of the left's collective consciousness that cable company Comcast is out to silence them. Apparently, Comcast has come down from their circling black helicopters and decided to target the left by moving MSNBC from their basic cable package to their more expensive premium services. This will, you see, "marginalize...

I have one of those cable boxes for my Comcast cable TV (had to get it to be able to record on my DVD recorder). Now that they're moving to all-digital, they want people to get these boxes ($4/month) and are moving some channels to higher tiers which will require cable boxes (not sure if there will be a higher price for these channels). Channels ranging from MSNBC to TruTV (formerly Court TV) to Boston Catholic Television are affected. Anyway, now I'm getting periodic interruptions in service. Screen goes black, sound goes out--it still tells you what channel you're on...

Some Comcast customers who actively download software and video files may soon find one set of unexplained delays replaced with a different sort of equally cryptic slowdowns. Comcast is starting to test new approaches to protecting its network from what it describes as congestion caused by a handful of customers who use far far more bandwidth than everyone else. Until now, Comcast has been using devices that interfered with the BitTorrent protocol—the most common method for downloading large files from computers of other users. BitTorrent is often used by people exchanging pornography and illegal copies of movies, but creators of...

Kryogeniks’ Defiant and EBK say it’s only a matter of time before the FBI catches up with them, speaking to Wired Threat Level in a Thursday phone interview. The FBI is working hard to make good on the duo’s fears, and announced a joint investigation with the San Jose police department on Friday, to try and track down the culprits responsible for a Wednesday attack against Comcast’s subscriber portal. Both Defiant and EBK are members of the hacking group Kryogeniks, who in the past was implicated in attacks against AOL and a number of celebrities. The duo said that their...

CN8 host Barry Nolan , who publicly complained a few weeks ago about Bill O'Reilly receiving an award from the Boston chapter of National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, has been fired by the Comcast network. "Their take is that I was insubordinate," Nolan told us yesterday. "They wanted me to sit down and shut up." The host of "Backstage With Barry Nolan" had argued that O'Reilly, the volatile Fox News host and former Channel 7 anchor, was unworthy of the Governor's Award. (Past recipients include the likes of Mike Wallace, Ken Burns, and Natalie Jacobson.) "The idea of...

NEW YORK (AP) - Cox Communications appears to be interfering with file-sharing by its Internet subscribers in the same manner that has landed Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) in hot water with regulators, according to research obtained by The Associated Press. A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore. Of the 788 Comcast subscribers who participated in the study, 491, or 62 percent, had their connections blocked. At Cox, 82 out of 151 subscribers,...

Other than Time Warner's single-city foray into monthly data caps, consumption-based billing has mostly been little ISPs with little monopolies, and given the market, we thought it'd stay that way. Broadband Reports is, uh, reporting that now Comcast is mulling monthly caps (which Comcast's PR guy confirms, though not the details)—something like 250GB, and then $1.50 for every GB over that. According to their source, the idea has "a lot of momentum" and it'll start rolling out in the next two months. The other part is that they're going to start ramping up DMCA notices to pirate assholes, with a...

Cannot get YouTube at all here in my computer. I have Comcast Hi-Speed Internet here in Southern Maryland. Every other page downloads properly. I have my YouTube in my "Favorites", so I have not been misspelling it. Comcast says it's a problem with YouTube. What gives? Are we in the USA or in Pyongyang?

As cable TV companies pack ever more HD channels into limited bandwidth, some owners of pricey plasma, projector and LCD TVs are complaining that they're not getting the high-def quality they paid for. They blame the increased signal compression being used to squeeze three digital HD signals into the bandwidth of one analog station. The problem is viewers want more HD channels at a time when many cable and satellite providers are at the limits of their capacity... "They have to figure out a way to deliver more HD content through their distribution networks," ... Compressing the signal is cheaper...

New traffic shaping can disrupt a Comcast Internet connection Recently, it has been observed that Comcast is disrupting TCP connections using forged TCP reset (RST) packets [1]. These reset packets were originally targeted at TCP connections associated with the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.

If you have some tinfoil handy, now might be a good time to fashion a hat. At the Digital Living Room conference today, Gerard Kunkel, Comcast’s senior VP of user experience, told me the cable company is experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who’s in your living room. The idea being that if you turn on your cable box, it recognizes you and pulls up shows already in your profile or makes recommendations. If parents are watching TV with their children, for example, parental controls could appear to block certain content from appearing on...

The man who spoke for Comcast at Harvard last month has told the Federal Communications Commission that the agency has no legal power to stop the cable giant from engaging in what it calls "network management practices" (critics call it peer-to-peer traffic blocking). Comcast vice president David L. Cohen's latest filing with the Commission claims that regulators can do nothing even if they conclude that Comcast's behavior runs afoul of the FCC's Internet neutrality guidelines. "The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the...

Excerpt - CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Comcast Corp. on Tuesday acknowledged hiring people to fill seats before the start of a contentious federal hearing on how the company manages its broadband network, allowing its employees to take those seats when the filled-to-capacity hearing started. Many people were turned away before Monday's Federal Communications Commission hearing at Harvard Law School, leading critics to accuse Comcast of stifling debate over the company's practice of favoring some forms of Internet traffic over others. Comcast said it hired people to hold seats only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to...

WASHINGTON - Internet users should be free to surf where they want and download what they please. But shouldn't the owners of the networks that make the Internet possible also have rights? That, in a nutshell, is the topic of debate at a special public meeting of the Federal Communications Commission at Harvard Law School on Monday. Recent events involving Comcast Corp. and Verizon Wireless have raised questions about network owners interfering with customer traffic flow. The meeting also is expected to attract a rally on minority media ownership. The session is the agency's most serious public discussion to date...

Bay Area cable provider Comcast Corp. and San Jose-based eBay Inc. may be potential bidders for Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, as Microsoft Corp.'s offer for Yahoo Inc. threatens to knock out the two most likely suitors for the Internet unit, Pali Research said. There's a lack of buyers for AOL, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research, said Monday in a note. Still, Comcast Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts may be interested in AOL to get its advertising network and Web site, he wrote. Roberts is unlikely to pay more than $10 billion, according to Greenfield. In 2000, AOL purchased...

FCC questions Comcast on interference with file-sharing trafficJan 14, 2008 6:23 PM (4 hrs ago) AP NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. Monday said it has received letters of inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission regarding complaints that the company actively interferes with its subscribers' Internet traffic. A coalition of consumer groups and legal scholars asked the agency in November to stop Comcast from discriminating against the sharing of certain types of Internet data among subscribers. Two groups also asked the FCC to fine the nation's No. 2 Internet provider $195,000 for every affected subscriber.And Vuze Inc., a company that...

Federal regulators plan to investigate whether Comcast improperly interferes with BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic on its network. The announcement by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin arrived in a panel discussion at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to an Associated Press report Tuesday. Since at least last summer, reports had been circulating that the cable company was throttling BitTorrent traffic, which Comcast promptly denied. But in October, the AP released the results of tests, based on attempts to download the King James Bible, which it said confirmed that Comcast was actively interfering with the practice....

...Like virtually everyone in America under 35, and like virtually no one over 35, I am now using only a cellphone. I have given up my land line. It happened almost by accident. One day, I changed my home phone service from Verizon to Comcast because Comcast had lowered its prices for a Special Introductory Offer. Right from the start, though, there were problems: People whom I phoned were telling me that my voice sounded like it was coming to them across a parking lot from the drive-through speaker at a Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. ...soon afterward my phone went...

A San Francisco Bay area subscriber to Comcast Corp.'s high-speed Internet service has sued the company, alleging it engages in unfair business practices by interfering with subscribers' file sharing. Subscriber Jon Hart based his claims on the results of an investigation by the Associated Press published last month that showed Philadelphia-based Comcast actively interferes with attempts some high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online.

CSPAN2 has been removed from my cable (comcast) lineup. I was wondering if this is happening exclusively here in my area. I went to the Comcast home page and I was unable to find any mention of this change.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two Senators on Friday called for a congressional hearing to investigate reports that phone and cable companies are unfairly stifling communications over the Internet and on cell phones. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said the incidents involving several companies, including Comcast Corp., Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., have raised serious concerns over the companies' "power to discriminate against content." They want the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to investigate whether such incidents were based on legitimate business policies or unfair and anticompetitive practices and if more federal regulation is needed. "The phone and...

I have lumped these together as they are symptomatic of underlying interesting issues on corporations vs internet issues: The first is Verizon's definition of unlimited: New York State has given Verizon Wireless a million new reasons understand that the word “unlimited” when used in advertising should mean what it means elsewhere in polite society.The second is a Congressman's comments on Comcast's forging of reset commands to stop BitTorrent legal downloads: "Comcast has made a major mistake in attempting to hinder peer-to-peer file sharing as an aspect of its network management," Boucher said. "The inability of customers to (share files) significantly...