FCC Denies Challenges to Program Contract Access

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The FCC has denied content companies objections to 245 individuals seeking to view programming contracts and other competitively sensitive documents submitted to the FCC as part of the reviews of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV merger reviews.

The FCC said that for 235 of them, the objections provided no basis for rejecting them. In the case of the other 10, which include Free Press and other nonprofits, the FCC said that the objection failed on definitional grounds.

The content companies had argued that the documents should only be viewable by outside counsel or consultants, but the FCC said that outside counsel also applies to noncommercial entities not involved in decisionmaking—like negotiating programming contracts.

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John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.