DEFINITE READS

• WebNewser reports that Aol has requested to see confidential documents involved in the public filing from the Comcast-NBC acquisition.
• The New York Times reports that local TV broadcasters have resigned to ‘quiet concerns’ with the NBC deal, worried about its impact but fearful of disrupting their own negotiations with the cable giant.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that Comcast rivals ‘flooded’ Monday’s call for public comment on the NBC deal.

After the jump, David L. Cohen hits the company blog, Comcast SportsNet buys another local sports blog and more.

MIGHT BE OF INTEREST

• The Comcast corporate blog features comments from Executive Vice President David L. Cohen on this week’s deadline for public comment on the NBC acquisition, in addition to writing that support had ‘poured in.’
• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Verizon has moved its FiOS bundling prices to be the same for month-to-month customers as contracts, which has been a criticism of the product in Comcast advertisements.

GIVE A GLANCE

• Comcast SportsNet purchased Phillies blog Beerleaguer, months after buying the700level.com, both for undisclosed sums.
• A press release announces that Comcast SportsNet grabbed exclusive coverage of the NBA draft.
• Chicago Business reports that that city’s Mayor Richard Daley and other city officials have come out in support of the NBC acquisition.
• Multichannel News reports that Comcast Internet-video publishing subsidiary ThePlatform is connecting its product with IP-connected set-tops and other tools that will allow users to move their content to big-screen TVs. H/T Philly Tech News
• The Naples News reports that a Comcast employee has filed a racial discrimination suit.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

We’re not quite done with this topic yet.

For two consecutive weeks, the biggest Comcast story has remained the same — it’s partnership with Time Warner to launch an online TV video streaming service that requires cable subscription authentication.

Major challenges remain in designing that authentication system, reports the Los Angeles Times. While broadcast networks like NBC have been quick to put their content online for free, cable providers, like Comcast, are eager to create a source of revenue online.

The L.A. Times also reports that the initiative, dubbed TV Everywhere, is proposed to include regular commercials, like broadcast TV, despite the trend online for fewer, shorter video advertisements. (Watch the CEOs of Comcast and Time Warner speak on the proposal after the jump.)

If you’re thinking of the online TV limit, think 500 hours, as Multichannel News reports. Web video watched through TV Everywhere will count toward the overall 250-gigabyte per month usage limit, which Comcast instituted last fall.

“According to my calculations, 250 Gbytes is enough for some 496 hours of high-quality video streaming, or the equivalent of 20 days of around-the-clock online-video watching,” wrote Todd Spangler.

While some executives have brushed the concern aside, the question of antitrust implications for the Comcast and Time Warner Internet-video collusion is real, Gigaom reports.

After the jump, keeping baseball from a 94-year-old fan, Comcast and Time Warner heads speak, and four other Comcast stories for the faithful.

In order of importance for your ease:

• Inquirer columnist Danny Rubin finds and reports on 94-year-old Jessie Foyle, a Phillies fan to the extreme who struggles to listen to the baseball team’s games on a transistor radio because her retirement home has DirecTV. Comcast owns rights to most of the Phillies games and, Rubin suggests, they ain’t sharing.
• Comcast became the first major cable TV company to release wireless broadband beyond of Wi-Fi hotspots when it launched the service in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday. Services in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and others are planned to follow by the end of 2009. This follows the company’s November 2008 investment in Clearwire.
• The Inqy’s Bob Fernandez profiles the work of Comcast Interactive Media, the company’s 800-employee Internet division. It includes ping pong and the department’s relationship to its cable TV operations.
• TV Squad suggests that a Comcast advertisement attacking Verizon’s FiOS TV has been changed.
• A press release announcing that Comcast is now the third largest residential phone services provider.
• Comcast Voices has a video interview with Brian Roberts and Jeff Bewkes, CEOs of Comcast and Time Warner respectively, about their company’s partnership on TV Everywhere, as announced last week.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

In Comcast news big enough to get Philebrity’s Joey Sweeney to bite, Comcast has reached a partnership with Time Warner to put content from their Turner Broadcasting online, where Comcast-subscribers can watch, as the Business Journal reported yesterday.

The agreement also included a set of principles for future online distribution of TV shows on a platform they call TV Everywhere, which require viewer authentication. Read those guiding principles here.

In the announcement, Comcast said it will begin testing next month this On Demand Online with 5,000 subscribers. The initial Turner programmaing will include content from TBS and TNT. No word on if you’ll be able to get those old reruns of Walker Texas Ranger.

This model is seen as a direct threat to advertising-supported Web TV streaming sites like Hulu, as Wired reported. Paid Content reports that Comcast got a taste for that model from ESPN360 in its partnership with Disney.

The Inquirer’s Joe Distefano, who offered the news a brief, recently reported on timid speculation about a Comcast merger with Time Warner.

After the jump, someone else has an interview with Brian Roberts, Verizon gets faster, video of Comcast Idol participants, and four other Comcast stories for the faithful.

In order of importance for your ease:

• The Boston Globe has a Q&A with Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts, in which he says, “Do I hear of some mistakes? Yes.” Feel free to finish that with a punchline in the comments.
• Bobbie Fernandez over at the Inquirer reports that DirecTV has relatively quietly grown its list of subscribers to 18 million, nearing the Comcast behemoth. Add them to Verizon and apparently Hulu as combatants.
• Multichannel News reports that in at least 10 markets, including Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C., Comcast will host commercials advertising FiOS TV, the golden product of rival Verizon.
• In other Verizon news, the Business Journal’s Peter Key says Verizon has announced opening its fastest digital subscriber service to nearly a quarter million more Pennsylvanians.
• And because Scott McNulty at the Comcast Voices corporate blog never fails to post something I feel compelled to share, the telecommunications giant hosted a Comcast Idol competition for its employees and, yes, I swear, all five finalists actually produced creative and entertaining songs about their company. Unsurprisingly, the boys from San Fran who played it nearest to the Comcast Dream Big theme won, but, below, watch my favorite, “I Love Comcast,” a beauty from a Michigan crew that gives a nod to our friend and social media whore Asher Roth.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

Hold on to your clunky digital cable boxes Philadelphia, because a good old-fashioned capitalist throwdown is brewing between local cable giant Comcast and its feisty competitor Verizon.

You may remember that Verizon received approval from City Council earlier this year to build a $1 billion FiOS network in the city. According to the company’s franchise agreement with the city, it will fully cover the city in FiOS within seven years with initial service offerings beginning by the end of 2009.

If recent moves by Verizon in the 67th ward are a sign of things to come, Verizon may be challenging the cable giant’s Comcast Network news channel as well.

During a conference call yesterday, Verizon announced the creation of local news-based channels in its New York and Long Island markets to compete with similar offerings by Cablevision. The new channel is slated to feature 10 hours of live news programming each day, and will cover regional high school athletics.

In Philadelphia, such a channel would likely compete directly with local news broadcast and Comcast’s newly retooled Comcast Network.

While Philly is roughly a year behind its neighbor to the north, residents can look at the roll out of FiOS there as a sign of things to come. Although, there Verizon faces two entrenched competitors in Time Warner and Cablevision, while in Philadelphia Comcast is the only major cable provider in town.

If download speeds in other cities are any indication, Verizon FiOS will likely offer faster speeds than Comcast. And to top it off, Verizon isn’t the second most hated company in country.

The company already created a similar locally focused channel in Washington D.C which is roughly on the same roll out schedule as Philadelphia.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

It isn’t true, so you really ought to stop saying it.

That’s the crux of a cease and desist letter that Verizon Communications has sent to Comcast in response to the telecommunications giant’s series of advertisements called “Don’t Fall for FiOS,” in which, among other claims, Comcast calls a triple-play-like service for bundle from Verizon $400 more expensive per year than the ‘Cast’s version, as reported Tuesday by the Inquirer’s Bob Fernandez.

“Verizon’s been running a negative campaign against Comcast for years and its response to our campaign shows that they can dish it out but they can’t take it,” a Comcast spokeswoman says.

Boys and girls, that fight is getting tweeted:

After the jump, Comcast reports to the FCC, a mildly awkward Comcast interview on Web teen safety and four other stories that would interest any Comcast-head.

In order of importance for your ease:

• The Inquirer’s Fernandez also reports that that squabble isn’t slowing Verizon, which is expanding its FiOS TV wireless mobile service with more real-time sports games. Cable360 reports that Verizon’s CTO was talking about broadband strategy this week.
• The Business Journal reports that NBA TV has inked a deal to be on Comcast’s Digital Classic lineup. As we’ve reported, contentious negotiations with the NFL Network ended in Comcast’s favor last month, followed by a deal with the NHL Network. Because MLB TV, which Comcas partially owns, is already on the tier, pressure remains on the telecommunications giant to work with the cricket channel.
• PC Mag reports on what stakeholders in a national broadband plan told the FCC by Monday’s deadline for reporting. They give crib notes for the responses from Comcast, Google, Verizon and others. The Inquirer’s Fernandez also�reports that Comcast told FCC that nearly all of the households in its franchise areas already have access to high-speed Internet, among other details.
• Oh, and because we love the meta of Comcast interviewing Comcast and talking about safety using Comcast products, we bring to you a recent interview by Comcast Local Edition foxy anchor Jill Horner of the company’s Internet security minister Jay Opperman.

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.