FCC Input Could Aid DOJ Appeal of AT&T/Time Warner Court Call

The Federal Communications Commission has filed a document with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that could help the Trump Administration's challenge of a DC district judge's decision to allow the merger of AT&T/Time Warner, which closed back in June.  That includes the current, Republican-led FCC emphasizing the previous Democratic-led FCC's conclusion that the Comcast/NBCU transaction would increase bargaining leverage and raise prices of programming to rival distributors—hence the conditions applied on that deal.

US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled June 12 that the government had failed to prove its case that the merger would not be in the public interest. While the FCC's legal team, led by general counsel Tom Johnson, said it was not filing in support of any side, instead simply clarifying the lower court's apparent misconstrual of the commission's adjudicatory proceedings, its friend of the court (amicus) brief would be friendlier to the Trump side since it could buttress the Administration's appeal of that district judge's decision. The FCC told the appeals court it wanted to clarify that the judge should have given weight to comments AT&T and DirecTV had filed in previous mergers, including the Comcast/NBCU merger, arguing that, in those vertical mergers—like AT&T-Time Warner—the result could be higher fees. The district court held those documents to be of limited value because AT&T and Time Warner had reason to argue against allowing a competitor to get bigger, and thus argue for the increased bargaining leverage theory those companies said did not apply to their merger.