Studios, Networks Ask FCC to Rethink Charter/TWC Protective Orders

The TV and movie studios and broadcast networks have asked the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its protective orders in the proposed Charter/Time Warner Cable/Bright House merger, saying they are illegal violations of the Trade Secrets Act and Administrative Procedures Act. Those provide the framework for how the FCC deals with sensitive business information submitted by the parties wishing to merge, including programming contracts with program providers, like studios and broadcast networks.

The petitioners are the same groups who petitioned the FCC to reconsider its protective orders and their sharing of program contract info in the Comcast/TWC and AT&T/DirecTV merger reviews, then took the FCC to court when it declined to do so. The US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit overturned those orders, saying the FCC had not sufficiently justified its decision for making program contract work product widely available to the representatives of hundreds of third parties, including competitors and consolidation critics. But the court also remanded the orders back to the FCC for better justification. In the meantime, the FCC nixed the Comcast/TWC deal and approved the AT&T/DirecTV deal.