FCC Seeks More Info on Charter-TWC Deal

In its review of Charter’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, the Federal Communications Commission is collecting lots of information; it’s what it does after all.

On Jan. 11, Time Warner Cable supplemented its response to an earlier filing to clarify certain data. Also on Jan. 11, Liberty Corp. (Malone has a 27% stake in Charter) supplied answers to a bunch of questions, though conceding that the documents it supplied related to terms and conditions of affiliation, distribution and program license agreements and negotiations were not responsive "at this time" to the FCC requests. Liberty did supply documents in response to FCC questions about Liberty's relationship to Starz and Discovery, Malone's involvement in programming and distribution decisions, including making that programming available to over-the-top providers, and Malone's or Liberty's "incentive or ability" to withhold programming from online video distributors and pay-TV providers other than New Charter. On Jan. 8, the FCC asked Level Three for the most recent interconnection agreement with Bright House and with others.