Court Stays FCC Order on Merger Contracts
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia says the FCC can't make Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV programming contracts available to third parties just yet.
A three-judge panel of the court—Judges Brett Kavanaugh, Cornelia Pillard and Judith Rogers—Friday (Nov. 14) granted at least a brief stay of the FCC's Nov. 10 order that would have allowed the commission to start making the contracts, memos, e-mails and other documents available starting Monday (Nov. 17) at 3 p.m..
The court said it wanted more time to consider the motion and that the stay—which was literally a "brief" stay because it was to allow for briefs to be filed—should not be construed as a ruling on the merits of the stay. So, the court's stay was on its own motion, rather than in response to the content companies' request for the stay.
