The merging companies might be able to sell the station, WPCH, to avoid FCC scrutiny, said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, an instructor at Georgetown University’s law school in Washington.
“The wild card in all this will be the FCC,” said Roger Entner, an analyst with Recon Analytics LLC. “It’s hard to predict what the regulators will do. They are pretty much starting with a blank page.”
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, holds a significant lead in the polls as the Nov. 8 election approaches and has been critical of megamergers. But even her opponent, Donald Trump, broke with Republican orthodoxy on Saturday by saying he would block the Time Warner acquisition, arguing that such deals leave too much power concentrated among too few companies. He also suggested he would favor a break up of Comcast and NBC.
While Democrats’ increasing suspicion of corporate consolidation could increase risk to the deal, a Clinton administration probably would approve it, in part because agencies have let through similar takeovers that don’t reduce the number of competitors, Paul Gallant, a Washington-based analyst for Cowen and Co., said in a note.
No comments:
Post a Comment