D.C. Memo: Is Charter Next to Face Carr’s DEI Guillotine?
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DEI: If Charter Communications doesn’t end up facing the FCC’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guillotine, it will take a miracle. Charter needs FCC approval to merge with Cox Communications, a $34.5 billion broadband-mobile combination that still has months of FCC review to come. Under FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the agency has refused to allow media and telecom deals to close if they have failed to extirpate their DEI policies and practices – the latest example being Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount Global that Carr released to sales last Thursday. Charter has a strong DEI profile, a trend started about a decade ago. It even has a senior corporate executive with the title of Chief Diversity Officer. That executive might remain with Charter, but if Charter wants to close the Cox deal, the diversity post will need to disappear and not just be renamed with a race-neutral sounding description that lacks substantive change. Cablefax’s 2024 Diversity List featured 19 Charter executives. Charter could have an out with Carr – showing him that its DEI initiatives do not represent “invidious” discrimination. But it is hard to find a case where Carr has identified a DEI model that has passed this test. On July 14, Charter and Cox filed an 83-page Public Interest Statement selling the FCC on the deal. Word selection was telling: Diversity was mentioned exactly zero times, Equity seven times (all in a strictly financial sense), and Inclusion just once (in a reference to a streaming bundle.) Charter’s corporate website’s Strengthening Communities section has a Diversity & Inclusion tab but there is nothing to see (last visited July 29, 2025.). A Charter executive declined to discuss the DEI issue within the context of the FCC’s merger review. Charter shareholders are scheduled to vote on the Cox transaction on July 31, 2025.
