Petitioner-appellees Nexstar, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting are asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for rehearing en banc of its finding that DirecTV has antitrust standing to sue the three companies for an alleged price-fixing conspiracy (see 2512160032). As the dissent by 2nd Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan pointed out, the finding in DirecTV's favor is "the first of its kind and conflicts with this Court's precedents," the broadcasters petitioned last week (docket 24-981). En banc review "is thus necessary to secure and maintain uniformity of the Court's decisions internally and among the Courts of Appeals." The broadcasters said the two-judge majority in the 2nd Circuit panel has extended the antitrust standing doctrine "beyond the limits imposed by every authority to date," incentivizing abuse.

Warner Bros. Discovery opting for Netflix's bid over Paramount Skydance's, which would maximize shareholder value, could be a Revlon violation, Flaster Greenberg transactions lawyer Daniel Markind wrote last week. A 1985 Delaware Supreme Court ruling about the takeover of Revlon said the company's board was obliged to seek maximum shareholder value over subjective values like "culture," Markind said. Currently, Paramount’s initial offer exceeds Netflix’s per-share price and is structured as an entire company offer, while Netflix wants to buy WBD's studio and streaming-service assets only, he noted.

The public narrative around the deal for Warner Bros. Discovery could affect the FCC’s consideration of Nexstar/Tegna, said New Street analyst Blair Levin in an email to subscribers Wednesday. The FCC “will likely make its decision on the broadcast deal after months in which the media is discussing the reasons for, and potential dangers of, media consolidation in the context of the battle over [Warner Bros. Discovery]," Levin wrote. If the White House signals that it would approve of Skydance Paramount or Netflix buying WBD, it would make the administration acting to block the much smaller Nexstar/Tegna deal appear hypocritical, he said. That issue is amplified if the Trump administration favors Paramount because “it is hard to see why you think an owner of [a] broadcast network should be allowed to consolidate assets in the streaming, studio, and cable network markets but broadcasters cannot bulk up within the broadcast market,” Levin wrote. He said that recent comments by Trump against relaxing the national TV ownership cap and slamming Nexstar’s NewsNation programming don’t make it less likely that the FCC will act on the cap “though we acknowledge that the President might cause us to reconsider our views if [Nexstar], for example, runs a news segment he does not like.”

There aren't material differences in the regulatory risks between the offers from Paramount Skydance and Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, WBD's board said Wednesday as it urged shareholders to go with the Netflix offer. The board said either transaction "is capable of obtaining the necessary U.S. and foreign regulatory approvals." Netflix has agreed to a $5.8 billion regulatory termination cash fee, the board noted, while Paramount is offering a $5 billion fee. The Paramount offer "reflects inadequate value" and puts numerous risks and costs on WBD.

Netflix data shows that even after acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, its share of U.S. TV viewing would increase from about 8% to 9%, which "reframes the antitrust argument" against the deal, former AVTN NewsNet24/7 CEO Phillip Covell wrote Monday. YouTube accounts for about 13% of viewing time, and Paramount/WBD would approach 14%, meaning "claims of Netflix dominance no longer align with consumer behavior," he said. "This is not a streaming war; it is an attention economy." He added that European regulatory objection to Netflix/WBD runs into the same problem.

DirecTV has antitrust standing to sue Nexstar, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting for an alleged price-fixing conspiracy, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday. In the docket 24-981 opinion, Judges Denny Chin and Steven Menashi reversed a lower court ruling that DirecTV lacked antitrust standing and remanded the case. They said the lower court erred in limiting the cognizable antitrust injury to the payment of jacked-up retransmission consent prices and didn't consider the antitrust injury stemming from blackouts of the broadcasters' content.

Texas sued five TV companies for spying on consumers and recording what they watch, the state attorney general's office said Monday. Two of the companies are headquartered in China, which raises additional data-harvesting concerns, Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) said.

The move toward smaller, targeted and cheaper live channel bundles probably won't slow cord-cutting, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Sunday. Pointing to YouTube TV's planned rollout of targeted channel bundles (see 2512100064), Dixon said both subscribers and operators have long wanted programmers to agree to such packages, and it's only recently that operators have made headway in those negotiations. However, he said, it's unclear that approach will slow subscriber defections. He noted that YouTube TV will still have to include channels that have nothing to do with a bundle’s focus due to terms in programmer licenses, jacking up the price. Streaming services let consumers build their own bundles that ultimately are cheaper, he argued. The strategy of bundling programmers' streaming services with cable is similarly more expensive than streaming alone, he added.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau's 2025 equal employment opportunity audit letters sent to 27 randomly selected MVPDs contain the same new diversity questions that were added to letters sent to broadcasters earlier this year. Attorneys have described the new questions as “landmines” because the precise nature of the response expected by the agency is unclear (see 2508220035). While previous EEO audit letters asked stations for information on any complaints about “unlawful discrimination” involving the station brought before government entities, the new questions seek information on both internal and external complaints. The questions also go beyond unlawful discrimination related to race, sex, religion and national origin and ask about complaints related to “any bias, sensitivity or any other matters” related to those categories. The letters also tell targeted MVPDs to submit copies of “any formal or informal agreement, contract, policy, practice, or other document that impose requirements or goals (aspirational or otherwise) regarding race, color, religion, national origin or sex on the Unit, contractors, employees or any third parties providing services on behalf of the Unit.” The audit targets include Comcast, Charter, Cox, Cincincatti Bell and Mediacom. Responses to the letters are due Jan. 26.

The FCC Media Bureau has rejected altafiber’s June retransmission consent complaint against Nexstar, said an order Friday. The MVPD had argued that Nexstar violated the FCC’s good faith retransmission consent negotiation rules by demanding high rates and that altafiber carry Nexstar's NewsNation cable network in the Cincinnatiarea, where Nexstar has no broadcast TV stations (see 2506160037). Nexstar didn’t violate the good faith rules because it offered multiple proposals with different terms during negotiations, the order said. “We do not find that these proposals are so 'sufficiently outrageous' that they constitute a violation of the good faith negotiation requirements under the totality of the circumstances test,” the bureau said.