The Federal Communications Commission stopped the clock in its review of Comcast’s* deal to acquire Time Warner Cable and AT&T’s deal to acquire DirecTV for the third time Friday afternoon, citing an ongoing court dispute over some programming contracts. The FCC briefly stopped its informal 180-day shot clock for deciding the deals in both October and December because of problems getting information it says it needs to review the transactions.
Since the FCC isn’t actually required to make a decision within that 180-day time frame — and has regularly blown past that deadline in the past — the action doesn’t actually mean anything.
* Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Re/code’s parent company.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
