It’s long past time for the FCC to junk cross-ownership rules...

It’s long past time for the FCC to junk cross-ownership rules limiting an owner’s holdings of daily newspapers and radio stations in the same market, companies that own both reported telling commission officials. There’s been a “consistency of the Commission’s pronouncements over 42 years concerning the limited role that radio plays in original newsgathering and dissemination, particularly with respect to local news,” a lawyer for Bonneville International and Scranton Times LP told an aide to Commissioner Robert McDowell (http://xrl.us/bm8btz). “The rule serves none of the long-standing policy goals that purportedly have served to justify the FCC’s broadcast ownership restrictions -- competition, localism, and diversity.” The agency’s quadrennial media ownership review rulemaking notice proposed ending the rule (CD Jan 20 p4), a regulation which the companies said “seems to be little more than an after-thought in the larger debate over the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership” limit. That’s even as the agency has sought comment on the paper/radio rule seven times since 1996, representatives of the companies reported telling Chief Bill Lake and others in the Media Bureau (http://xrl.us/bm8bu6). “Newspapers and radio do not compete in the same product market, a determination long established by FCC precedent and upheld by reviewing courts.” The filings are in docket 09-182.