Cable giant Comcast and the Tennis Channel have agreed to try resolving their long-running carriage dispute via mediation, according to a brief filing with the FCC on Wednesday. They have agreed to complete mediation by Nov. 24 before the case would move before an FCC administrative law judge.
Comcast has previously said it expects the FCC to issue a decision on its proposed acquisition of NBC Universal by around that Nov. 24 deadline.
The two sides in the carriage dispute have argued since early this year. Tennis Channel in January filed an FCC complaint about Comcast, alleging it is discriminating against networks that it doesn’t own. The complaint focused on Comcast’s carriage of the network on a premium sports tier, for which subscribers must pay extra, while Comcast carries its own Versus and Golf Channel channels on its basic tier.
