The end of last week gave players in the multiplatform business their first chance to comment on Liberty Media’s proposed takeover of DIRECTV at the Portals. And among the first to share its opinions was EchoStar, which suggested the Federal Communications Commission should reject the transaction unless “meaningful additional commitments” are added to ensure consumers and rival video distributors are not harmed by the deal.

“At its core, this transaction would only exacerbate problems in the broken video programming market,” EchoStar said in its comments filed with the FCC late Friday. “Liberty Media - and its sister companies affiliated with John Malone - has determined that additional ‘distribution muscle’ of DIRECTV’s national platform is critical to its efforts to expand and enhance its programming assets.

“Thus, the net result of this transaction is that Liberty will rejoin the ranks of vertically integrated major media conglomerates - including News Corp. - that can dictate the terms and conditions of programming … higher price and less choice … to MVPDs and consumers.”

EchoStar called for conditions on the deal, including access and arbitration rights to regional sports networks affiliated with Liberty. An attempt to limit conditions to the three RSNs Liberty Media is gaining through the DIRECTV acquisition should be rejected, the No. 2 DBS company said.

Also, program access protections should apply to all DIRECTV-affiliated programming, and to both domestic and international programming and markets, EchoStar said. In addition, the satcaster said conditions should apply to Liberty Media for at least six years after the close of the transaction.

Meanwhile, the American Cable Association also called for program access rules and non-discrimination conditions as part of the DIRECTV deal, including requirements covering Discovery channels. (Liberty Media has a stake in Discovery.)

And ACA, which represents small, independent cable operators, said the FCC should clarify and strengthen the rights of a collective bargaining agent appointed by independent cable companies for negotiations covering carriage of regional sports networks owned by Liberty/DIRECTV.