FCC Departed From Past Procedure in Release of VPCI, Content Companies Say

The FCC’s ruling that confidential programming contract and retransmission consent deal information would be available to parties involved in the AT&T/DirecTV and Comcast/Time Warner Cable transactions is “an abrupt and unexplained departure” from its prior policy, said content companies Monday in their initial brief on the matter before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The FCC “disregarded its own past practice, judicial precedent, and the rights of entities like Petitioners,” said CBS, Univision, Viacom and the other programmers involved in the petition for review. The content companies want the court to vacate the portion of the Media Bureau’s Modified Confidentiality Orders that would make Video Programming Confidential Information available to parties to the mergers. Because of the scale of the deals, access to the contracts those companies are involved in would give the parties involved access to contract information “covering most of the major television markets in the United States,” NAB said Monday in an intervenor brief filed in support of the content companies. “The sheer size of the merging parties and the scope of their agreements exacerbate the risk of harm from disclosure to third parties of broadcasters’ negotiating strategies and contract terms with the five affected” multichannel video programming distributors, NAB said.