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Personnel representing News Corp. at the Federal Communications Commission approached commissioner staff on proposed conditions tied to its pending takeover of DirecTV and Hughes, urging regulators to reject a provision concerning Fox regional sports channels and their carriage on cable systems. <br />
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Specifically, News Corp. said the FCC should not adopt conditions that would force Fox regional sports networks to continue providing signals to cable operators in the absence of a contract between the parties. The media giant said DirecTV's competitors need an incentive to negotiate with Fox over carriage, and arbitration between the sides should be a last resort. <br />
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"If Fox is forced to continue providing the RSN (regional sports network) signal throughout the arbitration procedure, MVPDs (multichannel video providers) will have little incentive to negotiate a mutually acceptable business arrangement with Fox," the company said in a FCC filing. "Arbitration will become the rule rather than the exception. The result will be dozens - if not hundreds - of costly arbitrations and potentially FCC reviews, to the detriment of Fox and ultimately for the public." <br />
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The News Corp. meetings at the Portals took place earlier this week. They included meetings with staff for Commissioners Kevin Martin, Michael Copps and Kathleen Abernathy. <br />
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Also this week, personnel representing a group of cable operators made the rounds at the commissioner offices, addressing concerns with the proposed transaction. <br />
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The group said News Corp./DirecTV deal conditions should address the potential threat of News Corp. withholding or threatening to take away must-have Fox programming, including regional sports channels and broadcast content, as a means of "extracting supracompetitive prices" from services competing with the satellite TV service.
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