The Department of Justice has created the a new office in the Antitrust division to oversee enforcement of consent decrees, like the one that allowed Sprint and T-Mobile to merge.

The Office of Decree Enforcement and Compliance will have the primary responsibility for enforcing consent decrees and judgments in civil matters and advise the criminal section when parties seek credit for corporate compliance programs. 

Related: DOJ Updates Vertical Merger Guidelines 

It will also be the point of contact for anyone with information on possible violations of final judgments. 

Antitrust Division chief Makan Delrahim is no big fan of conditioned mergers, arguing that those are efforts to make illegal mergers legal, with DOJ having to act as an ongoing monitor. 

“The Office of Decree Enforcement and Compliance will ensure the American consumer fully benefits from the Antitrust Division’s hard work identifying anticompetitive mergers and conduct,” said Delrahim. “We are building on our recent successes in Live Nation and CenturyLink. Those matters show how important it is to enforce our consent decrees vigilantly.” 

Last week, Justice and broadband/telecom company CenturyLink settled allegations that the company violated the conditions of its acquisition of Level 3. 

The Office of Decree Enforcement and Compliance will be headed Lawrence Reicher, most recently counsel to the assistant attorney general (Delrahim). 

Pennsylvania has joined the list of states whose attorneys generals have joined a suit to try and block the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, which would combine the number three and four wireless carriers. 

That merger horse is close to being out of the barn already given that Justice has already agreed to the deal with conditions and the FCC has circulated an order approving the deal that has the support of the three Republican votes it needs to pass and is expected to be approved as soon as the two Democrats have been given the customary time to vote--after which it is deemed granted with the majority of three Republican votes.  

Related: Texas Joins T-Mobile-Sprint Suit 

The government says that the combo will create a stronger number three competitor to Verizon and AT&T, and the condition that spinning off pre-paid wireless operator Boost Mobile to Dish will seed a fourth facilities-based carrier. The AGs argue that it will instead reduce competition with no guarantee that Sprint will ever morph into a new "uncarrier."

“Pennsylvania’s addition to our lawsuit adds to the states’ momentum against this megamerger that continues to be bad for consumers, bad for workers, and bad for innovation,” said Attorney General Letitia James of New York, one of the lead states on the suit. 

"The merger between T-Mobile and Sprint would severely undermine competition in the telecommunications sector, which would hurt Pennsylvanian consumers by driving up prices, limiting coverage, and diminishing quality," said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro of his state's addition to the suit. 

A total of 18 AGs are on the suit. The others are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. 

A New York district court last month granted the AGs' request for more time for discovery in the case and to incorporate DOJ's settlement, so agreed to delay the start of the trial from Oct. 7 to Dec. 9. At the time, they said other states might be joining.  

T-Mobile and Sprint have agreed not to close the deal until six days after a court decision, so the deal, if it survives that court gauntlet, won't close until at least early 2020. 

Signs are good that the Justice Department will be announcing its decision on the T-Mobile-Sprint merger Friday morning. 

Late Thursday night, DOJ said the antitrust chief Makan Delrahim will be holding a "pen and paper" briefing at 11 a.m. Friday (July 26) to announce "a significant merger enforcement action." 

DOJ did not say which merger it was, but it is likely to be that one. 

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has already signaled he supports the deal on condition that T-Mobile spins off its Boost Mobile prepaid business and some spectrum, which DISH is expected to buy. 

Pai has called the deal "a unique opportunity to speed up the deployment of 5G throughout the United States and bring much faster mobile broadband to rural Americans. We should seize this opportunity.”  

His fellow Republicans have signaled they are okay with it, too, so it should have the votes to pass. 

 T-Mobile has been saying that without the deal the company would not be able to build out that national 5G network as quickly.  

Pai also said that the combined company has "offered specific commitments regarding the rollout of an in-home broadband product, including to rural households."  

According to FCC officials speaking on background, the companies have promised to structure the Boost divestiture so that Boost has the incentive and ability to compete with T-Mobile-Sprint in the low-cost market, and vice versa, notwithstanding the wholesale agreement between the new company and Boost.

Journalists covering the media beat are hoping the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit does not choose about the same time to announce its decision on the challenge to the FCC's network neutrality rules.

The court generally releases its decisions Tuesdays and Fridays between 10 and 11 a.m. 

The Justice Department has officially launched its latest review of the 75-year-old consent decrees with The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), which collectively handle music licensing and fees for music on video and audio platforms .

The decrees circumscribe how they can license rights to public performances, but Justice, as it had earlier signaled, is reviewing those agreements to see if they should be maintained as is, terminated or modified (as the 1941 decrees have been before, ASCAP most recently in 2001 and BMI in 1994.

The decrees "require ASCAP and BMI to issue licenses covering all works in their repertory upon request from music users. If the parties are unable to agree on an appropriate price for a license, the decrees provide for a “rate court” proceeding in front of a U.S. district judge."

Antitrust chief called it the latest in a series of necessary reviews of the decrees. "It is important for the Division to reassess periodically whether these decrees continue to serve the American consumer and whether they should be changed to achieve greater efficiency and enhance competition in light of innovations in the industry," he said.

The ASCAP decree requires it to “grant to any music user making a written request therefor a non-exclusive license to perform all of the works in the ASCAP repertory...." The BMI decree requires that BMI licenses provide access to those compositions, the right of public performance of which [BMI] has or hereafter shall have the right to license or sublicense.” The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015 ruled, in the Pandora decision that ASCAP is “required to license its entire repertory to all eligible users.”

President Donald Trump signaled last October, when signing the Hatch-Goodlatte Music Modernization Act into law (it updated the music licensing framework for the digital age and provided congressional oversight of the Justice consent decree review, that if the DOJ review leads to a decision to eliminate them, he would try to provide notice to Congress, but was giving no guarantees, depending on the circumstances.

The bill also provided for congressional overnight of the Justice Department review of the long-standing consent decrees. Graham wants to do some of that overseeing.

Delrahim had signaled a year ago that his division was taking a fresh look at the decrees, and with a fairly critical eye, at the decrees. Justice also reviewed the decrees in 2015, under a previous Administration, but left them in place.

One of the key issues is whether music licensing organizations can collect fees for fractional rights under blanket licenses. The court concluded that the decrees neither required full licensing of musical works nor prevented fractional licensing. Fractional licenses are works with multiple authors using different licensing organizations, so, say, BMI has some fraction, rather than all, of the rights.

Justice is seeking outside stakeholder input as part of the review. That public comment period closes July 10.

ASCAP and BMI have already proposed a modification to interim, time-limited consent decrees which it noted in commenting on the launch of the review Wednesday: “The DOJ’s long-anticipated review of the BMI and ASCAP consent decrees and call for public comment represent an opportunity to do what BMI has been advocating for years – modernize music licensing," it said. "BMI and ASCAP have already issued an open letter in which we share a proposed solution for the industry that will benefit music creators and licensees alike. We look forward to working with the DOJ, licensees and our other music partners to help ensure a smooth process that safeguards a vibrant future for music.”

Tegna said Monday that it has agreed to purchase the remaining interests in multicast networks Justice and Quest it does not already own for $77 million in cash from Cooper Media.

The deal values the networks at about $91 million. Tegna had previously owned about 15% of the channels. Cooper Media parent Cooper Holdings held the rest. Justice was launched in 2015 and focuses on true crime, mystery and investigation programming. Quest was launched last year and concentrates on science, history, engineering and adventure-reality series. 

“Consumer viewing habits are shifting toward over-the-air consumption supplemented by inexpensive over-the-top services,” Tegna CEO Dave Lougee said in a press release. “Justice and Quest allow us to fully capitalize on the growth in over-the-air television audiences, which has increased by more than 48% over the past eight years.”

Tegna said it will finance the deal, expected to close in the second quarter, with available cash and borrowings from its existing credit facility. In addition, Cooper Media president and general manager Brian Weiss will join Tegna and will continue to run Atlanta-based Justice and Quest. 

“It has been an honor to work with Tegna to build Justice Network and Quest from the ground up, while informing and entertaining the growing over-the-air audience,” Cooper Holdings chairman Lonnie Cooper in a press release. “The timing is right for Cooper Holdings to focus on its core agency businesses, while cheering on the networks’ continued success as part of the Tegna family.”

Nixon Peabody LLP is acting as legal counsel to Tegna in connection with the proposed deal.

AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson said Friday (Feb. 10), that the Time Warner deal will definitely not be filed with the FCC and said suggestions he had pitched the deal personally to Donald Trump were flat out wrong.

Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box Friday (Feb. 10), he said "the latest" on the proposed $85 billion Time Warner merger was that the deal had been filed with the Department of Justice and the review was ongoing. He confirmed what AT&T had signaled in an SEC filing--there will be no filing at the FCC because no licenses are changing hands. 

"It will be a one-track review," he said, adding that it was proceeding as expected at Justice and he still thought it would be closed by the end of the year. Justice reviews deals for antitrust issues, the FCC's is a wider review that includes the impact on the public interest. But Justice usually reaches out to the FCC for input during its review, given that the FCC is the expert agency on communications.

Stephenson also talked about the company's spectrum holdings. He said AT&T had been amassing a lot of spectrum licenses In the past eight years and that, in the spectrum "arms race," it has a large and fallow block of spectrum real estate and will start lighting up 500 meg wireless service in Austin, Tex., and Indianapolis this year.

President Donald Trump had threatened to block the merger while on the campaign trail, but MSNBC pointed out that new Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said there would be no politics involved in the review.

Stephenson said that was good news since the deal should be reviewed on the legal merits, which he emphasized was a vertical merger.

Stephenson said reports he had personally pitched the deal to Trump were wrong. "I have had two conversations with President Trump (http://www.multichannel.com/news/finance/att-s-stephenson-trump-focused/410429) or his administration and in neither one of those conversations was there any discussion about this deal. We have to be very, very cautious."

He also said there was not truth to a suggestion that CNN "would take care" of the Trump Administration.

Trump has been highly critical of CNN, calling it fake news after it reported on a security briefing Trump got on claims of Russian election interference and the President's personal conduct.

Stephenson said that as "big and juicy" as the story seems, it is "a pretty straightforward transaction.

"It is a telecom company buying a media and entertainment company. We compete nowhere. The day after we close this the telecom industry is going to look exactly as it does today. The media and entertainment industry is going to look exactly as it does today, so it is a clean transaction and we feel good about it."

Stephenson praised FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's scrapping of the Wireless Bureau's zero rating advisory against AT&T's DirecTV Now, saying it was among a half dozen things that would have been bad for the industry that had gone away under new FCC management.