FCC Stops Informal Review Clocks for Comcast, AT&T Mergers

The FCC is awaiting a court ruling on whether CBS Corp. and other media companies need to divulge programming contracts for the reviews, the agency said in a notice posted on its website. It said it was pausing the 180-day clocks that set informal deadlines for its rulings.

A U.S. appeals court heard arguments on the media companies’ petition to protect their documents on Feb. 20, and hasn’t issued its opinion. The FCC in the order Friday said it "would be advantaged by knowing the resolution" before the informal clocks reach the 180-day mark, which they were slated to do by the end of this month.

"We understand the FCC’s decision," Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokeswoman, said in an email statement. She said the agency "appears to be making significant progress in the review."

Michael Balmoris, an AT&T spokesman, didn’t comment.

Comcast dropped 0.5 percent to $59.05 at 4 p.m. in New York, and AT&T fell 1.1 percent, to $32.76.

The FCC says the 180-day period is a goal, and exceeding that timetable doesn’t indicate a deal’s fate.

The clock in Comcast’s $45.2 billion merger proposed in February 2014 was stopped twice before, for 42 and 21 days. The clock in AT&T’s $48.5 billion deal for DirecTV, proposed in May, has been stopped once before, for 42 days.

The Justice Department also is reviewing the deals.

The case is CBS v. FCC, 14-1242, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (Washington).