Feds OK With Fandango's Acquisition of Flixster, Rotten Tomatoes

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The federal government signaled this week they have no issues with the acquisition by Comcast/NBCU's Fandango movie ticket website of movie review sites Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes from Time Warner's Warner Bros.

Time Warner gets an equity stake in the deal, which was announced last month.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department combine to do Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust reviews of deals over approximately $75 million (the exact figure is occasionally adjusted), but grants early termination of that review if they find no reason to block or condition the deal.

The FCC has no involvement in the review since no FCC licenses are involved, so the deal is now free to close.

Fandango continues to be a subsidiary of NBCU.

John Eggerton
John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.