Sources: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler poised to circulate draft order approving Charter-TWC deal as soon as this week, with clauses ensuring growth of online video
Here's Why We Need to Stop Him Mari Silbey / Light Reading : FCC Nearing Charter Merger Approval - Report Reinhardt Krause / Investor's Business Daily : Comcast, Charter, Altice Cable Swaps Eyed After Deal Approvals Kate Cox / Consumerist : The TWC/Charter Merger Looks Likely To Happen — And Soon Jake Smith / ZDNet : FCC expected to approve Charter-Time Warner merger, with conditions Tweets: Shalini Ramachandran / @shaliniwsj : Charter took a far more conciliatory approach than Comcast early on, which has helped pay off. http://www.wsj.com/... Shalini Ramachandran / @shaliniwsj : FCC order likely to ban clauses restricting programmers from putting content online, impose buildout requirement http://www.wsj.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This draft order is the payoff to a year-long charm offensive: Charter entered the FCC's review having made a three-year pledge against data caps and usage-based billing, then secured Netflix's public endorsement by promising no peering fees through 2018. Where Comcast's earlier TWC bid died in opposition, Charter built its case as the broadband provider that would leave streaming alone.
Wheeler circulating a draft means approval is close, and the reported clauses — banning restrictive programmer contracts plus buildout requirements — show what the agency extracted in exchange. The deal would fold Time Warner Cable and Bright House into a single operator at the moment online video distribution is the industry's contested frontier.
First-order effects
- Charter moves from applicant to near-approved acquirer, with its no-data-caps and open-peering commitments locked into the order's conditions alongside new online-video protections.
- Programmers gain contractual protection: the draft bans clauses that restrict how they sell content online, directly loosening cable's traditional holdback leverage.
Second-order effects
- Comcast and Altice face the same deal-approval environment — related coverage already flags talk of cable-swap transactions between them once Charter clears, meaning one approved mega-deal primes further consolidation.
- Rival pay-TV distributors must now compete against a larger Charter bound by pro-streaming terms, shifting pricing and exclusivity negotiations toward programmers' online distribution options.
Third-order effects
- The pattern suggests merger approvals become conditional contracts rather than one-time verdicts — though durability is uncertain, as the FCC later reversed Charter's 1-million-household overbuild requirement, showing conditions won at approval can be unwound afterward.
The trend: Cable consolidation is advancing by concession — operators trading cap, peering, and buildout pledges for regulatory sign-off on ever-larger combinations.