FCC Approves Liberty/DIRECTV Deal

WASHINGTON, D.C., February
26: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the transfer of
News Corporation’s majority control of DIRECTV to Liberty Media.

In its ruling, the FCC
said that the public-interest benefits of the transfer outweighed the potential
harms. In addition, as Liberty and News Corp. are severing their ownership
interests with each other, the result will be a decrease in media consolidation
and a reduction in vertical integration.

The FCC has ruled,
however, that Liberty and DIRECTV must abide by program access, program
carriage, regional sports network arbitration and retransmission consent
arbitration conditions modeled on similar conditions imposed in 2003 when News
Corp. acquired the satellite platform. In addition, all of the ownership
interests connecting DIRECTV-Puerto Rico and Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico
must be severed within one year.

—By Mansha Daswani