News Corp. Program Curbs Would be Dropped Under Draft FCC Order
Video programming conditions on News Corp., resulting from its ownership of DirecTV from 2004 to 2008, would be dropped under a draft order on circulation at the FCC, commission officials said. With the company’s transfer last year of a controlling stake in the satellite-TV provider to Liberty Media in an $11 billion asset swap, News Corp. sought to escape the limits. That request would be granted by a order drafted by the Media Bureau that Chairman Kevin Martin’s office circulated Jan. 16, FCC officials said. Jan. 20 was Martin’s last day at the commission.
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The draft order seems to propose eliminating almost all programming limits on News Corp. stemming from the FCC’s 2004 Hughes order approving the purchase of the DirecTV stake from General Motors, an FCC official said. The item wouldn’t free News Corp. of any other program access rules that may cover the company, another official said. A commission spokesman declined to comment.
The commissioners are unlikely to approve the item right away, because of more pressing matters such as the DTV transition, which acting Chairman Michael Copps has asked the FCC to focus on, commission officials said. (See separate report in this issue.) It’s unclear whether the proposed order will be controversial among FCC members once they study it, they said. A communications industry lawyer said the item probably will have a smooth road to approval because News Corp. got out of the U.S. satellite programming distribution market in the deal with Liberty. It may be a while before the item is approved, because there’s no deadline, such as one related to company financing, for the curbs to disappear. A News Corp. spokeswoman declined to comment.
The American Cable Association, which wants News Corp. to remain under some restrictions, criticized the item. “Just when we thought we heard the last from Chairman Martin, another order comes to light slamming the cable industry, this one aimed at small operators,” said Ross Lieberman, the group’s vice president of government affairs. “We expect that the new commission will discard Martin’s order and conduct its own inquiry into whether the consumer-friendly conditions should be maintained on one of the industry’s largest media conglomerates.”