Minds Unchanged

Their decision to merge into a $2.7 billion-a-year telecommunications giant has brought International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. and the American Broadcasting Companies nothing but static. The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger last December, but only by a bitterly divided 4-to-3 margin that failed to silence objections from Congress and the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. As the clamor mounted, the FCC finally agreed in March to take another look.

Additional hearings failed to change a single FCC member's mind. Last week, splitting along the same 4-to-3 lines as it had before, the commission reaffirmed its approval of the ITT-ABC get-together. In so doing, the FCC rejected the Antitrust Division's contentions that the merger might (1) restrain competition, (2) subject ABC's public affairs programming to unusual pressures from ITT's far-flung business interests, and (3) enable ITT to drain the network of capital that otherwise might go into broadcasting. Such fears, concluded the commission majority, "are too speculative or slight to weigh heavily in the balance."

Whether Justice's trustbusters go along with the ruling remains to be seen. Department lawyers will "read the decision critically." If still unsatisfied, they could take the biggest merger in broadcasting history into federal court.

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