The merger rumor surfaced last week after some analysts speculated that federal officials could be inclined to support it, following their approval of the XM-Sirius satellite radio merger.
DIRECTV and Dish tried to merge several years ago, but the FCC rejected it in 2002 on grounds that it would be anti-competitive.
In an earnings call following release of the company's second quarter report, Malone noted that the merger would be "very synergistic," meaning the company could save money on duplicate efforts and combine resources on costly projects, such as the expansion of their high-def lineups.
But Malone and other Liberty executives expressed surprise that analysts and journalists believe that the FCC would approve the deal.
“I don’t understand why the journalists all of a sudden discovered the potential of a merger of Echo (the former name for Dish Network) DIRECTV," Malone said. “We’ve talked about it frequently in the past. It would be very synergistic if it were doable. However, we don’t see that the regulatory environment has changed since the last time we made comments on the subject. We think it would be problematic to try and merge the two companies in the current regulatory environment.”
Liberty CEO Greg Maffei echoed Malone's remarks, saying that market conditions have not changed to the extent that it would encourage federal regulators to approve the deal.
“Obviously, there are a ton of synergies out there. That deal had challenges once. Whether it could be done today in a different environment, I don’t know enough about," he said.
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