FCC Approves $11 Billion DirecTV Stake Transfer to Liberty
FCC commissioners unanimously approved the transfer of a $11 billion stake in DirecTV to Liberty Media from News Corp., agency officials said late Monday. They said the deal was cleared late last week after Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps voted to support it, despite the Democrats’ concerns that the deal doesn’t mandate the distribution of broadcast stations to subscribers of the satellite TV company in small cities. The Republican commissioners voted earlier to clear the deal and subject it to no more conditions than the two in FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s order, circulated Feb. 6. Martin had asked Adelstein and Copps to vote by Friday (CD Feb 21 p3).
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At presstime, the FCC was poised to issue a press release announcing the vote and clearing the deal, said agency sources. They said the text of the full DirecTV order is undergoing final revisions and will be published later. The press release will let Liberty Media complete the transfer Tuesday of the controlling stake in DirecTV, the officials said. In approving recent deals including Clear Channel’s $26.7 billion takeover, the FCC didn’t announce it cleared the transactions until the full order was complete. Commissioners agreed to unveil the press release early because the companies wanted to complete the deal, said agency sources.
Adelstein and Copps failed to get a so-called local into local condition, which also was sought by NAB. The provision would have required DirecTV to carry by satellite all signals of TV stations in all 210 markets. One of the FCC Democrats will issue a partial dissent of the deal, while the other will issue a partial concurrence, said agency officials. The final order will contain two conditions Martin said Feb. 8 he imposed, said the sources. DirecTV will be required to follow for several years the same programming conditions in the FCC’s 2003 order approving the sale of its controlling stake from General Motors to News Corp., said a source. An affiliate of Liberty Media will be required to divest its ownership of cable systems with about 90,000 subscribers in Puerto Rico, where DirecTV sells satellite TV service, said the source.
DirecTV said the deal would “collapse” if the FCC imposed a local-into-local provision, according to a Feb. 22 ex parte filing from the company. An e-mail from a DirecTV official to an Adelstein aide late Thursday said CEO Chase Carey hadn’t changed his stance against that condition. The company will distribute broadcast stations to all 210 markets either by satellite or by giving subscribers gear to get the signals over the air. The company will provide local into local in 150 markets in the spring, said the e-mail. “If you overlay the multi-billion dollar investment we've made to bring local HDs [high definition signals] to a broad array of markets, it further demonstrates our strong commitment to local into local.”