The Federal Communications Commission today paused the "180-day informal time clock" in its review of the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV mergers.

The extension comes in response to a request by Dish Network; Comptel; Monumental Sports and Entertainment; RCN; Grande Communications, Inc.; Choice Cable TV of Puerto Rico; and Writers Guild of America, West. These organizations filed their request for an extension after content companies refused to allow access to confidential carriage agreements, despite the FCC issuing a joint protective order requiring limited disclosure. The content companies that objected to providing confidential information included CBS, Scripps, Disney, Time Warner, Twenty First Century Fox, Univision, Viacom, Discovery, and TV One.

Today's FCC order states:

Among other points, [the companies] argue that certain third-party programmers “do not want any of the interested parties’ outside counsel or experts to view [their programming contracts],” and have “set out to nullify” the Modified Joint Protective Order by filing multiple objections to requests for access. These commenters argue that the programming information is of particular importance in evaluating the applications at issue, and that “these issues cannot be joined, and that analysis cannot be conducted, without reasonable access by both the FCC and outside counsel and experts not involved in competitive decision-making.” We agree with these commenters that their current inability to review Highly Confidential Information that has been submitted in these dockets significantly hampers their ability to meaningfully comment and participate in these proceedings, in both Docket 14-57 [Comcast/Time Warner Cable] and Docket 14-90 [AT&T/DirecTV]. Accordingly, we are suspending the pleading cycles and stopping our 180-day informal time clock in both dockets. After we rule on the objections, we will issue a Public Notice setting forth new pleading cycles that will provide sufficient time for commenters to review the relevant materials and prepare their comments.

Comcast issued a statement in response, saying that it is still confident that it will be able to buy TWC. "It is routine for the FCC to pause the review of significant transactions as it works to create a full record," Comcast said. "The Commission is working to hear the concerns of various parties. In the meantime, review of information and evidence already in the docket will continue. We are confident that the Commission will quickly resolve these issues while continuing its work so that review will be completed in early 2015."