EU clears News Corp control of Germany's Premiere
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp won conditional approval from the European Commission on Wednesday to buy German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere, of which the media giant holds 22.7 percent.
The European Union's top competition regulator said News Corp had pledged to allow third-party access to Premiere's satellite platform, which serves Germany and Austria. The company's top attraction is live German Bundesliga soccer.
Premiere is switching its encryption, known as "conditional access," to a new standard used by News Corp and known as NDS.
The Commission said it had consulted many market players and found that the switch to NDS could have had the effect of dumping third parties from the satellite.
"News Corp submitted commitments confirming that the technical services provider would continue to be in a position to grant third-party access to Premiere's satellite platform in the same way as before the merger," a Commission statement said.
Premiere said in April it wanted to double the size of its supervisory board to make room for two executives from Murdoch's media empire and one other member.
News Corp will have enough shares to carry votes at stockholders meetings, based on previous attendance.
New York-based News Corp owns the 20th Century Fox studios, the MySpace online social network and Britain's the Times newspaper, as well as being the biggest shareholder in British pay-TV group BSkyB.
(Reporting by David Lawsky; Editing by Dale Hudson)
