The FCC Media Bureau extended the comment deadline in a proceeding on requests from programmers and broadcasters to expand protections of highly confidential documents involved in the review of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal and AT&T/DirecTV. Comments are due Sept. 29, the bureau said Friday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1u3pzQu). Comments were originally due Sept. 26, after the bureau issued a public notice Sept. 23 (CD Sept 25 p7). A public interest attorney had urged the FCC to reexamine how it handles highly sensitive documents in review of pending transactions. The practices should be reexamined “to insure that all documents considered by the Commission staff are within the direct jurisdiction of the Commission and made part of the record,” said Andrew Schwartzman of the Georgetown University Law Center, in comments filed in dockets 14-90 and 14-57 in his personal capacity. Until the FCC changes the procedures to provide full transparency, interested parties “will not be able to participate fully in the Commission’s review of assignments and transfers, and the Commission runs the risk of judicial reversal in these or other future proceedings,” he said in comments. The FCC’s practice of “making house calls” to the Justice Department to review documents that aren’t included in the record before the commission is “fundamentally unfair and exposes the commission to great jeopardy on judicial review,” he said. There’s no need to adopt the proposed measures to give additional protection to sensitive documents, he said. The FCC has ample authority to modify its ordinary protective order process to impose a higher than usual degree of protection if circumstances arise, Schwartzman said.

The departure of Attorney General Eric Holder likely will not have major implications for the big communications mergers and acquisitions before regulators -- AT&T/DirecTV or Comcast/Time Warner Cable -- nor on M&A that could be in the works, industry lawyers told us. Holder said Thursday he will leave after a successor is in place. He is one the last top administration officials left from the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009.

The departure of Attorney General Eric Holder likely will not have major implications for the big communications mergers and acquisitions before regulators -- AT&T/DirecTV or Comcast/Time Warner Cable -- nor on M&A that could be in the works, industry lawyers told us. Holder said Thursday he will leave after a successor is in place. He is one the last top administration officials left from the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009.

The Prometheus Radio Project asked that its petition for a ruling requiring the FCC follow the diversity requirements of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals be uncoupled from other court challenges to the FCC 2014 quadrennial review Further NPRM, said a motion filed in the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday. Such rulings, called Writs of Mandamus, are sometimes used to compel agencies to take specific actions. The D.C. Circuit is already considering a motion from Prometheus to move the consolidated court challenges to the quadrennial review and the commission’s joint sales agreement attribution rule to the 3rd Circuit (CD Sept 10 p22), but the mandamus request should be considered separately, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman, who represents Prometheus. That venue change is under consideration by a D.C. Circuit merits panel, but the order shifting the matter to the panel was silent on the mandamus issue, Schwartzman said. The mandamus request should be shifted to the 3rd Circuit regardless of what happens to the other parts of the case since it concerns that circuit’s remand to the FCC that “the Commission failed to collect the data or conduct the studies necessary” to meet the Third Circuit’s requirements, said Prometheus’s filing

Broadcasters asked the FCC not to require Comcast and Time Warner Cable to disclose sensitive retransmission consent information as part of the combining cable companies’ response to the agency’s recent request for more information on the deal, said a letter posted Monday in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1sVbe42). Though such documents would be treated as confidential and redacted to anyone not a party involved in the proceeding, said the letter addressed to Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake from E.W. Scripps, Gray Television, LIN Television, Nexstar and Sinclair, it asked that FCC officials instead view the agreements at the Department of Justice. “Given the large number of parties to this proceeding, we have many concerns about the potential widespread dissemination of these extremely competitively sensitive documents, even if only among outside counsel,” said the broadcasters.

Three petitions to deny AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV cite implications for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, competition and the public interest. The petitions by public interest groups and groups representing the PEG community were filed in docket 14-90. AT&T again said the new company would create a stronger competitor to the cable bundle. Comments in the proceeding were due Tuesday.

Three petitions to deny AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV cite implications for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, competition and the public interest. The petitions by public interest groups and groups representing the PEG community were filed in docket 14-90. AT&T again said the new company would create a stronger competitor to the cable bundle. Comments in the proceeding were due Tuesday.

Three petitions to deny AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV cite implications for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, competition and the public interest. The petitions by public interest groups and groups representing the PEG community were filed in docket 14-90. AT&T again said the new company would create a stronger competitor to the cable bundle. Comments in the proceeding were due Tuesday.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai urged the commission to repeal the sports blackout rule at its Sept. 30 meeting. The government shouldn’t intervene in the marketplace “to help sports leagues enforce their blackout policies,” he said in an op-ed on Gannett-owned Cincinnati.com (http://cin.ci/1uMG6q0). He rejected arguments from rule advocates that leagues might televise their games only on cable or satellite TV, saying the leagues’ contracts with over-the-air broadcasters are enduring. By moving games to pay-TV, “the NFL would be cutting off its nose to spite its face,” he said. While leagues would remain free to negotiate deals with broadcasters and pay distributors to enforce the blackout policy without the rule, “taking the government’s thumb off team owners’ side of the scale would create momentum for a more accessible sports experience,” he said. There’s broad support for lifting the sports blackout rule, “and the FCC appears ready to accommodate that wish,” said public interest attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman. In proposing to repeal the rule, the FCC took the view that the goal of Congress in requiring the open video systems and direct broadcast satellite blackout rules was to achieve parity with cable, he said in a Benton Foundation blog post (http://bit.ly/1uBhmmg). If the commission were to repeal the cable rule, “it would fulfill the congressional goal of parity by repealing the other two rules as well,” he said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t seen as having made a decision on Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, said analysts, cable industry and public interest officials in interviews this week. Ex-FCC Chief of Staff Blair Levin doesn’t believe a decision on the merger has yet been made, he said in a conference call. The Department of Justice will decide if the deal should be approved, he said. Wheeler “may know where he’s leaning” but it’s “inconceivable” he would decide the fate of the deal before the Sept. 23 due date for Comcast and TWC’s opposition filings, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman. The FCC is also awaiting responses from Comcast, Charter Communications and TWC to the Media Bureau’s detailed information requests related to the deal and to Charter’s buying divested systems (CD Aug 26 p1), which were due Thursday, Schwartzman said. “Even if he made a decision, he doesn’t necessarily have the three votes” needed for a majority vote on the FCC, Schwartzman said.