The Federal Communications Commission this week restarted the 180-day review clock on a pair of significant acquisitions pending in front of the government regulator. The deals include AT&T’s $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV and Comcast’s $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable.
In resetting the clocks, the FCC said the AT&T/DirecTV deal would be at Day 70, while the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal would be set to Day 85. The AT&T/DirecTV clock was adjusted from Day 76 when the deal was initially stopped to compensate for the time lapse between when comments were filed and the clock was actually stopped.
AT&T’s proposed $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV was announced in May, and is designed to bolster the telecom giant’s pay-TV business and allow for a more thorough bundling of services. As part of its proposal, AT&T said it would commit to spending at least $9 billion in the FCC’s planned incentive auction process that is to include 600 MHz spectrum licenses returned by television broadcasters. The FCC in late October postponed the planned start of that auction until 2016.
The FCC initially stopped the clock on the proposed deals in mid-October, citing difficulty in gaining access to important agreements and following comments filed by “content companies” that said the release of confidential agreements to certain individuals with access to such information would undermine those agreements. Those content companies include CBS Corp. Scripps Networks Interactive, The Walt Disney Co., Time Warner, Twenty-First Century Fox, Univision Communications, Viacom, Discovery Communications and TV One.
The restart followed a pair of court decisions that prevented the FCC from releasing details on some of the agreements, the FCC noted, though only those labeled as “video programming confidential information” would be excluded from the released information.
In August the FCC set up a steering committee to oversee the deals, thus connecting their path through the regulatory process. The committee is chaired by FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet, with bureau chiefs on the steering committee including Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, International Bureau Chief Mindel de la Torre, Wireline Competition Bureau Chief Julie Veach and Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Chief Roger Sherman. Both proposed deals are headed by separate review committees.
The Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal, which was announced earlier this year, would combine the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 cable providers into a new “super No. 1” with more than 30 million customers and nearly half the domestic market.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter
