Company Town

* Mergers: The Federal Communications Commission’s first meeting of the year, originally scheduled for Jan. 18, has been postponed tentatively until Jan. 31, delaying consideration of the Walt Disney Co. merger with Capital Cities/ABC Inc. and other commission business. The meeting was delayed after a three-week shutdown of several government agencies, among them the FCC, and a subsequent snowstorm that prevented commission employees from working on pending business. The Jan. 31 date for the meeting is “not set in stone,” commission spokeswoman Susan Sallet said. The FCC is bound by law to meet in a public forum once a month. “We just haven’t been here” at the agency, Sallet said, adding, “We want to give ourselves time” to carefully complete consideration of pending business. Disney’s planned merger with ABC, approved by shareholders Jan. 4, had been widely expected to be the first item on the commission’s agenda in its first meeting of the year.