Towards a More Targeted and Predictable Merger Review Process

Speaking at the Institute for Policy Innovation Communications summit, Federal Communications Commission member Meredith Attwell Baker said the FCC should set a timetable and limiting principles for merger reviews so the process will not chill investment.

Commissioner Baker says the FCC should enforce its 180-day shot clock on vetting industry mergers, should make it clear merger conditions have to be truly merger-specific rather than general policy in conditions' clothing or the FCC equivalent of earmarks for public interest groups, and consider whether to get rid of the dual-review system that has both the FCC and either Justice or the Federal Trade Commission reviewing the same merger. She would like to see that change to answer three main questions: 1) should mergers be subject to dual reviews? 2) do the reviews take longer than necessary? and 3) do adopting wide-ranging conditions serve the public interest? She did not definitively answer the first question, but suggested the dual review was duplicative and that the FCC's role of approving license transferred had "morphed into a full-fledged merger review -- similar to, but not identical to, the antitrust review." She said the FCC should "We should work with Congress to help evaluate whether this dual review structure as currently configured remains the best use of limited government resources in this era of tightening budgets."