Wednesday, March 05, 2008

National Association of Broadcasters to file suit against the Federal Communications - Demands Further Deregulation

http://www.broadcastingcable.com


Look for the National Association of Broadcasters to file suit against the Federal Communications Commission's loosening of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules.

......


Media activist group Media Access Project, which represents Prometheus Radio, already sued over the Dec. 18 decision, also saying that it was arbitrary and capricious, but for entirely different reasons and filing its appeal in the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, the court that remanded the 2003 FCC ownership rule rewrite.

As opposed to media activists, which argued that any more deregulation has not been justified, broadcasters argued that the FCC did not justify why it stopped at loosening rather than lifting the ban on TV-station and newspaper ownership in the same market and why it chose not to loosen the local-TV-ownership caps, as it tried to do in 2003 before Prometheus, with MAP's help, got those deregulatory rule changes stayed and remanded.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin said at the time that he listened to the public at a series of ownership and localism hearings and concluded that a modification of the ban and no further deregulation of local ownership caps, radio or TV, was what was in the public interest.

No comments: