Court Blocks FCC Media Ownership Rules

Dr. Mu writes "According to this story in today's Seattle Times, 'The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia blocked implementation of FCC regulations that would have allowed companies to own more radio and television stations in the same market, and directed the agency to rewrite the rules.' In the interim, the FCC has already granted waivers to the old (1975) rules. It's unclear whether these waivers will now be revoked. Nonetheless, this ruling spells relief for smaller media interests and the diversity they provide."

Comments

Hard to tell what to think.

[Mr. Gorsky]

I don't know whether I should be happy that judges seem to be tapping the brakes on the kleptocracy, or sad that the judiciary is interfering with regulatory bodies appointed by (nominally) elected officials.

Re:Hard to tell what to think.

[rking]

I don't know whether I should be happy that judges seem to be tapping the brakes on the kleptocracy, or sad that the judiciary is interfering with regulatory bodies appointed by (nominally) elected officials.

The judges are also appointed by (nominally) elected officials and their job is to interpret the laws. In this case they found that the FCC had not fully complied with the laws created by the (nominally) elected officials and as such that their actions were invalid. The (nominally) elected officials can go and change the laws if they so desire, or the FCC can try again. The judges seem to be doing their job.

Re:Hard to tell what to think.

[DarkFencer]

That is the WHOLE point. They are not beholden to the political powers, they do not have to campaign, fundraise, watch polls, etc.

They do (almost universally) what they believe is right, not what will make them popular. You may not agree with a federal/supreme judge's interpretations of course, but that is our right.

Re:Hard to tell what to think.

[value_added]

What would make us all really happy is if we, as ordinary citizens, would have available the same legal manoeuvering as corporations.

"Officer, I request a temporary waiver from Vehicle Code 22348 because I'm running late for work and my boss is going to kill me." Or, if that doesn't fly, "Your honour, I request an exemption from the implementation of this fine."

What? A legal ruling *against* the interests...

[Anonymous Coward]

...of the big media conglomerates?

Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Wow...

[XeRXeS-TCN]

A decision made to *prevent* monopolies? What's the world coming to! We'll be disbanding Microsoft before you know it!

Re:Wow...

[StupidHelpDeskGuy]

In all seriousness, check out this quote from the article

"The decision was a victory for public-interest groups and consumers who flooded the FCC with more than 2 million letters, e-mails and faxes criticizing the regulations."

I find it more interesting that we had a say in that decision. I wonder how many of those were /.er's?

Finally..

[Maxite]

The FCC is finally getting told what it's limits are.

appeal?

[maxbang]

This is great an all, but is it possible for a higher court to reverse this ruling? I'm assuming the current broadcast oligopoly will not take this sitting down.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the FCC will be bought out by the SEC which was recently acquired by the FBI.

Still will be difficult to compete!

[f1ipf10p]

As good as this news is, I still do not expect my local access guy to be able to compete with the likes of Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner. Free press is getting tougher and tougher. At least there is the internet...

Re:Still will be difficult to compete!

[maxbang]

At least there is the internet.

There was hope that anyone could compete with the big boys at the beginning of the internet age, but thanks to lobbied legislation we've seen those options become marginalized. Sure, it's pretty hard to control the net, but they're trying, man. And that is very disquieting.

It's about time

[bool morpheus()]

I'm glad to see it. I'm not sure about anywhere else, but it seems like Clearchannel owns my entire city... I'd like to see some indie TV stations or something start up and not be squashed.

Re:It's about time

[maxbang]

Heh - I grew up in a small town in Wyoming. After moving to Minneapolis, I was very exicted about the radio. That feeling lasted for precisely one week. Every morning personality is a clone of each other (think Simpson's KBBL morning schwag), the music loops worse than a bad house mix, and the stations shuffle formats faster than a newbie fdisker. Thanks to my Neuros I have long last relief and a little radio in my pocket. I think clearchannel and disney own something like 90% of Twin Cities radio. The only thing worth listening to is KFAI, listener supported radio.

It's about damn time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod me as a troll if you want to, but this is needed!

With the the big radio corporations eating up radio stations left and right, the only thing we have left is 10 minute stop sets (commercial breaks) and "playlists" of songs that are cookie cutter.

If there were only a way to get things back to where they were back in the early-mid 90's where it was MUSIC played on a radio station, not voice tracked half assed talent, piped in morning shows from across the country, and corporate demanded commercials.

I mean, not everywhere has a AutoZone, Valero Diamond Shamrock, etc....

I know it'll be impossible to go back to MY glory dys of radio, but at least we can make sure that what has happend to create this beast, can be restrained.

WAY TO GO PHILLY!!!

Now, if other states could only learn a leason from this.... /disgruntled jock

Re:It's about damn time!

[RobotRunAmok]

I know it'll be impossible to go back to MY glory dys of radio

Glory Days? You want Glory Days?

Mid-Seventies, NY Metro Area. Top 40 on AM with people like Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie. Totally free-form jock-plays-whatever-suits-him with people like Scott Muni, Vin Scelsa, and Alison Steele. WPIX!!! ("From Elvis to Elvis") WQIV broadcasting in quadrophonic! Jazz up the yin-yang, from non-commercial through commercial stations, from Basie through Miles and up through Euro-Synth and Su Ra. All-Disco stations. All-Punk overnights. Live remotes nightly (or so it seemed) from CBGB's, the Bottom Line, Max's, uptown dinner-clubs and Irish pubs.

It was amazing. Intoxicating. And we didn't know it could ever be any other way.

Of course, in those medieval times, we actually bought records, with real money, in a record store. Music on the radio was diverse and good, and it was free, and if we wanted to own some of it we paid for it. Now, music on the radio is all the same crap, and the RIAA complains that nobody is paying for what they own.

There's a chicken-and-egg scenario here someplace, but I leave that to clearer heads to dope out...

I hope it sticks.

[BCW2]

It seems that any industry that is allowed to "consolidate" from many to a few owners or companies has the same results: Higher Prices, Worse Service. Doesn't matter what group you are talking about the same thing happens.

Re:I hope it sticks.

[Entropius]

Your radio bill *is* rising, although not directly.

They're playing more ads and worse music, thus the amount of time you have to expend and the number of inane ads you have to listen to in order to get the same entertainment value value has gone up.

It's all a matter of marginal costs. And, you're right--eventually when those costs (crappy radio) outweigh the value gained from radio, people will start listening to their own recordings in their cars. (Many already have, obviously.)

Re:I hope it sticks.

[Entropius]

After my second discman in a year broke (I only have a tape deck, so I have to use external cd players with an adapter in the car), I started using my laptop as a car music player. Lots of storage, no need to burn CD's.

And, while I've got it in the car, I may as well run netstumbler...

UHF!

[niktesla]

These rules played an intricate part of the plot for UHF, in which a UHF station was being bought out by a network station who were gonna use this rule as an excuse to close the popular UHF station, where you could you see such shows as Conan The Librarian, Ghandi II, Strip Solitare, and the best of all Stanley Spadowski's Playhouse!

But seriously, these small stations have a lot of unique programming that should not be lost.

Not a total reversal

[MooseByte]

While still good, it's worth noting that this is not a complete rejection of the FCC's new rulemaking. Specifically it still gives them plenty of leeway in radio consolidation and cross-ownership of radio and TV stations in the same market, provided the FCC "can provide better justification" for doing so.

But still, many a good reason to be doing the Happy Dance today! Hooray! Nice to see the courts still have some sanity in them.

Name the Losers

[earthstar]

The media ownership rules, adopted in a 3-2 vote along party lines in June of last year, lifted a 1975 ban on owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same town. The new rules allow a company to own two TV stations in more than 90 percent of local markets and up to three stations in the biggest markets such as Los Angeles and New York.

So can u name some of the companies that will be a big loser because of this ruling?

Roll out LPFM!

[John Leeming]

The one point that may be lost to the casual reader is that the conglomerates were the biggest stumbling block to the allocation of Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations going on the air.

With marginal engineering claims that "channel adjacency" would cause "undue interference" (read: get people to listen to something else in a virtually closed market owned by Clear Channel, for example), LPFM has been sidetracked and slowed from expanding to fill local community needs.

As well, this could also assist in 'breaking the back' of Clear Channel in its efforts to become the entertainment monopoly, controlling not only who it is that plays concerts at local venues, but the 'reverse payola' of not giving airplay to artists that aren't a part of the Clear Channel "stable of stars".

Now, if only the National Lawyers Guild would finish their legal challenge to the Communications Act of 1934...

Re:Roll out LPFM!

[Anonymous Coward]

You _do_ understand that the Low Power Radio Act of 2004 (which would deploy LPFM on a mass scale) is RIGHT NOW before the Senate and that a campaign is underway to rally support for this act.

Re:Roll out LPFM!

[connorbd]

FM broadcasting is more complicated than you'd think, though -- an improperly transmitted FM signal can have theoretically infinite sidebands, where an AM signal would have only two (one of which can be eliminated). It's been proven otherwise, but I think Big Media thought it had an actual point crying interference.

In any case, community radio is already here -- part 15 AM can cover a sizeable chunk of a town (at least here in the northeast) and multiple synchronized transmitters can create a large coverage area with no need for a broadcast license.

Waivers

[firstadopter.com]

Aren't rules meant to be followed until new rules come, instead of one agency just waiving them?

Regulatory Paralysis

[Detritus]

The problem is that every time the FCC issues new rules that affect large corporate interests, whether they're good or bad rules, the corporations immediately go to the federal courts in an attempt to stall or overturn the rules that they don't like. This can take years, even if the FCC prevails.

How would you like to live in a world where everyone had a staff of lawyers on retainer, and insisted on litigating every little problem in their life?

Re:I must be missing something here...

[Paragon of Indolence]

I think that "assuming the frequencies are available" is the crux of the issue. The court must be worried that the conglamorates will buy the best frequencies immediately. Also, I think (I don't actually know) that big advertisers are liable to spend their money with known corporations; small stations would have to develop quite a niche before they're going to see any serious advertising dollars.

A full Apellate Review is possible

[KarmaOverDogma]

but unlikely, should Chariman Powell decide to pursue it. This would involve all 12 judges at the 3rd circuit (there are 14 seats but two are vacant) reviewing the case, on the grounds that the standard appellate review was somehow flawed and/or unconstitutional.

Failing that, there is, of course, The United States Supreme Court.

Basically, according to London's Financial Times: the "...appeals court banned the FCC from implementing the controversial rules until the agency redrafted them or provided better justification for the limits it chose."

It is important to note that the court of appeals took several distinct and seperate issues with the reasoning behind FCC's new rules regarding further media consolidation, such as how it chose to define reasonable competition, and its data collection methods.

Even if the Supreme Court does decide to take up the case (unlikey, especially failing a full appellate review first) there is a high degree of likelihood they will simply send the case back to the apellate court for "further" review in a manner specified by the Supreme Court.

By the time all of this rolls around, we may have a new president and, therefore, a new FCC chairman as well.

In short, it will be a long time before further media consolidation takes place as currently propsed.

FCC Not Serious About Anything

[PingXao]

If they really wanted to get serious they go as far as actually taking the airwaves away from the big corporations and giving them back to the people. We want something in return for the use of those airwaves and it ain't a one-time bargain sale.

We used to get Real News. Now we get attractive people spewing corporate and government propaganda ant us all day. Why doesn't the FCC do anything about that? (thanks to Juan Cole for some of this stuff)