Judge Dismisses WHDH Lawsuit Against Comcast

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from WHDH-TV (Channel 7) against the media giant Comcast Corp., a decision that will cloud the future of the local station and shake up the Boston broadcast television market.

According to The Boston Globe, WHDH has been running NBC programming since 1995, but the peacock network, which is owned by Comcast, said earlier this year that it would end its contract with the station at the end of 2016 and launch its own new Boston TV station in 2017.

Ed Ansin, the 80-year-old billionaire owner of WHDH, sued Comcast in March, alleging breach of contract and antitrust violations. Comcast asked for the case to be dismissed.

Judge Richard G. Stearns, who heard arguments from both sides last week, on Monday ruled in Comcast’s favor — saying that WHDH had no legal right to demand contract renewal negotiations with NBC.

“WHDH’s loss of the NBC affiliation is no doubt a blow to the station’s profitability. But absent any actionable harm attributable to Comcast, it is simply an indurate consequence of doing business in a competitive and unsentimental market place,” Stearns wrote in his decision. “For the foregoing reasons, defendant’s motion to dismiss is allowed.”

Ansin’s lawsuit alleged that Comcast, the media conglomerate that in addition to owning NBC is a major cable service provider, engaged in unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practices when it refused to negotiate a renewal of its lucrative affiliation agreement with WHDH.

But in a 23-page decision, Stearns ticked through the reasons those arguments didn’t hold up. He said WHDH fell “woefully short” of proving that Comcast engaged in unfair or deceptive practices. Despite Comcast’s size, he added, “mere possession of market power . . . does not an antitrust violation make.”

Read More Now