Comcast in recent days has told regulators in closed-door talks that the changing over-the-top landscape means it should not be required to distribute NBC programming to broadband rivals beyond January 2018, The Post has learned.

With so many rivals — like Dish Network’s Sling TV, which launched Feb. 9 without NBC — content from Comcast’s NBCUniversal is not needed to succeed, Comcast brass told the FCC, sources said.

The FCC — which is weighing along with the Justice Department Comcast’s $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable — believes the combined company might have too much leverage over content and that allowing it to not sell programming would reduce competition, said a well-placed DC source not involved in the review.

Presently, Comcast, as a condition of its 2011 purchase of NBCU, is forced, through January 2018, to distribute NBC programming to competing carriers that offer shows from at least one other broadcast network.

Comcast and the FCC are presently finishing deliberations over Comcast’s mega-merger with TWC. The combined company would control roughly 30 percent of the cable market.

“The review is in the bottom of the sixth inning,” the source said.

Soon, Comcast will likely propose remedies, and then the FCC will accept them, propose its own, or block the merger.

According to a source, Comcast, highlighting the rapidly changing OTT network universe, points to a speech that FCC boss Tom Wheeler made on Friday, in which he ticked off the many new choices consumers have, including Sling, HBO Now and CBS’s streaming service. Comcast and the FCC declined to comment.