The Comcast/Time Warner and DirecTV/AT&T mergers have been in development for months, and could change the state of the modern cable provider in the U.S. That's why many members in the internet and media industry have done their best to resist the implications of such a decision. Congress is in the 180-day process of judging whether the merger would create a monopoly and hurt other cable and internet service providers.
However, that process was recently paused by the FCC due to a pending court case about video programming contracts that involves the four companies. The case deals with the FCC's ability "to give third parties commenting on the mergers limited access to video-programming contracts between the merging companies and TV-channel owners like CBS, Walt Disney, and Viacom," according to the WSJ.
Apparently, these three media providers have done their best to fight against the FCC requiring media companies to be transparent about certain pieces of information, including pricing and strategies. However, the FCC believes that such information would be useful for judging deals and mergers like the Comcast/Time Warner merger. If companies were to share such information with the FCC, it promised to protect it with the best security possible so that nothing would be leaked.
It's unclear how this delay or the upcoming case will affect the FCC's decision.
"We anticipate the issues surrounding the litigation between the FCC and the programmers to be resolved quickly so the FCC can complete its review of our transaction.......We continue to look forward to closing our deal in the first half of the year," a spokesman from AT&T told PCMag.
In fact, three out of the four companies who are involved with the potential mergers seem to be happy with this delay. DirecTV did not release comment on the delay.
