Letter to the Editor

Cable World, July 11, 2005

To the Editor:

This is in reference to CableWORLD's June 20 online Q&A with a Comcast executive, and the related article "Are Independents' Days Over?"

The interview is a marketing piece that does not comport with reality. It demonstrates extreme hypocrisy by Comcast. You could almost entitle the interview "Comcast Selling Real Estate--in Swampland."

Comcast states that the future is in VOD and not linear capacity. But Comcast launches its own channels on linear capacity, while relegating would-be independent competitors to VOD.

Comcast's TV One launched last year and reached 20 million subscribers at breakneck speed. TV One is a linear channel, with analog carriage on Comcast in several markets--no small feat for a new channel. Comcast's new Sprout channel will launch on linear capacity. Other new Comcast channel initiatives, like Comcast SportsNet West, Comcast SportsNet Chicago, Comcast's New York Mets channel and Comcast's Dallas Cowboys channel, exist or are planned as linear channels. And it would not surprise anyone if Comcast launches their rumored AWE channel and other initiatives as linear channels. And of course, Comcast's other channels, for example Golf Channel, E!, G4, Style and Outdoor Life, all occupy valuable linear channel space.

Indeed, CableWORLD reports in its June 20 issue that in Los Angeles, Comcast has moved its own networks from digital to expanded basic in advance of the market's pending system swap with Time Warner Cable. This further demonstrates the high value Comcast places on linear carriage while relegating independents to VOD.

Linear channel capacity is beachfront real estate. VOD capacity is in comparative terms swampland, set aside for potentially competitive independent channels.

In assessing whether there is disparate treatment of independent competitors and anticompetitive and discriminatory behavior, what's relevant are the facts in the marketplace rather than the marketing rhetoric.

Doron Gorshein

CEO, The America Channel

Heathrow, Fla.

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