Broadcasting & Cable reports that the FCC voted 4-1 today to approve the $17.6 billion acquisition of Adelphia Communications by Comcast and Time Warner.

The merger, said the commission, serves the public interest, complies with all rules and statues and whatever public interest harms there might be are outweighed by public interest benefits, including principally system upgrades that will bring high speed voice and data, HDTV and video on demand to Adelphia's systems that are upgraded, and resolving the Adelphia bankruptcy.

The key conditions the FCC did put on the merger had to do with regional sports networks. Comcast and Time Warner must put disputes over pricing or access to its regional sports networks (RSNs) to arbitration. The companies also cannot deny access to its sports networks to other multichannel programming providers, with, as expected, a carve-out for Philadelphia....

Time Warner Cable and Comcast will divvy up Adelphia systems serving 5.2 million subscribers scattered across 31 states. The two cable operators will further swap systems from their existing portfolios to create stronger geographic clusters. The deal will allow Time Warner to emerge as the largest cable operator in the Los Angeles market, which has been the most fragmented major market in the country. The deal will also allow Comcast to fulfill its promise to regulators to unwind its 21% ownership of Time Warner Cable, something inherited in a past deal. Antitrust regulators frowned on such a significant link between the two largest cable operators—a legacy of the AT&T deal. As part of the various system swaps, Comcast will give Time Warner that stock back.

Click here for the full Broadcasting & Cable article (a subscription may be required to access it). Here's the initial Reuters coverage.