By Shalini Ramachandran
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. on Friday handed TV
channel-owners a preliminary victory in their standoff with the
Federal Communications Commission over disclosure of programming
contracts, raising the prospect of further delays to the agency's
review of big pay-TV industry mergers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
granted the TV programmers' emergency request to postpone an FCC
order that would require them to make their contracts with pay-TV
providers, including Comcast Corp. and DirecTV, available to third
parties as part of the merger reviews. The next step would be for
the two sides to litigate the underlying case.
The media companies, which include Walt Disney Co., Time Warner
Inc. and CBS Corp., fear sensitive business information will fall
into the wrong hands and put them at a competitive disadvantage.
The programming contracts include information such as the prices
pay-TV providers pay for carriage of TV channels.
The dispute has already delayed the reviews of Comcast's pending
merger with Time Warner Cable and AT&T's acquisition of
DirecTV. If the FCC decides to press its case in court, that could
slow the process further.
Some lawyers say the FCC could also choose to drop the matter
and continue with the merger process. The court said the agency
"has access to the relevant documents at issue in this matter and
can continue to evaluate the proposed merger during the stay."
A FCC spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Brent Kendall and Gautham Nagesh contributed to this
article.
Write to Shalini Ramachandran at
shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com
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