Comcast to Drop Jennifer Lopez-Owned Fuse Music Channel

The future of Fuse, the music cabler owned in part by Jennifer Lopez, is in doubt now that Comcast is dropping the channel as of the new year.

Fuse blasted the cable giant on Sunday for the decision, asserting that it “met Comcast’s financial demands and no other requirements were ever communicated to us.” Comcast said its subscribers were notified of the change some weeks ago. It’s unclear how many subscribers Fuse, which targets young, urban viewers with music and lifestyle programming, will lose from Comcast, the nation’s largest MVPD.

Fuse reached about 74 million cable households a few years ago but was down to about 60 million as of February of this year, according to Nielsen. Comcast has a total of 22 million video subscribers.

Fuse president-CEO Michael Schwimmer on Sunday signaled the start of an effort to put PR pressure on Comcast for dropping one of the few sizable independently owned channels in the U.S. cable landscape. Comcast’s status as the No. 1 cable operator and broadband provider makes it vulnerable to attacks from watchdog groups. Schwimmer was quick to mention the Justice Department’s history of anti-trust oversight of the conglom stemming from its 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal.

“By removing our network from its consumer offering, Comcast is silencing yet another independent media company, in this case one that is devoted to providing a platform for inclusive voices and authentic representation at a uniquely important time in our society,” Schwimmer said. “A commitment to diversity is an enduring value, not a politically expedient card for Comcast to play until such time as consent decrees or business objectives no longer require it. Comcast’s behavior leading to its decision to drop Fuse reveals an agenda inconsistent with their public statements, giving further credence to the merit of ongoing DOJ oversight.”

For the past seven years, Comcast has had to operate its cable systems under behavioral restrictions established in exchange for federal approval of its NBCUniversal purchase. But the company’s consent decree with the Justice Department expired in the fall. Despite lobbying by Comcast rivals, the Justice Department is not believed to have taken any steps to extend that oversight.

Comcast’s axing of Fuse comes as all of the major traditional MVPDs are taking a hard line with programmers to prune their lineups of underperforming niche channels. The traditional cable and satellite TV business is under extreme pressure from Netflix, Amazon and the new breed of low-cost streaming channel bundles offered by YouTube TV, Hulu and others.

Fuse launched in 1994 as a music cabler owned by Cablevision, the former New York cable giant. Lopez came into the picture in 2014 when her NuvoTV channel bought Fuse for $226 million and merged operations under the Fuse banner.

The company is known to have been on the block for some time. But a single niche-targeted ad-supported channel dependent largely on cable carriage for revenue is a hard sell at a moment of major transition for the pay TV eco-system.

Lopez bought into NuvoTV in 2012. That company was formed on the back of Si TV, the groundbreaking Latino-focused cable channel launched by producer-entrepreneur Jeff Valdez in 2004.

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