FCC Okays Liberty Media’s DIRECTV Ambitions

MB Docket No. 07-18: The Federal Communications Commission (has approved the transfer of control of DIRECTV to Liberty Media, subject to conditions. The Commission concluded that, as conditioned, the public interest benefits of the transfer outweighed the potential harms and would be consistent with applicable Commission rules and policies. As a benefit of the transaction, Liberty Media and News Corp., which is the majority stakeholder of DIRECTV, would sever their ownership interests with each other, which will decrease media consolidation and reduce vertical integration therefore benefiting the public.

The Order also imposes certain conditions to ensure that the transaction will serve Commission’s competition and diversity goals. The Order requires that Liberty and DIRECTV abide by program access, program carriage, Regional Sports Network (“RSN“) arbitration, retransmission consent arbitration conditions, modeled on similar conditions imposed in 2003, when the Commission approved the transfer of DIRECTV from Hughes to News Corp. In addition, the Order requires that all of the attributable ownership interests connecting DIRECTV-Puerto Rico and Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico, Ltd., which will be under common control as a result of the transaction, be severed within one year, at which point the companies must certify either that they have reduced the relevant interests to a non-attributable level or that they have filed any applications necessary to divest assets—Washington, D.C.