Audacy Vote Expected This Week, Soros Fund Seen Drawing Republican Dissents

The “must-vote” clock on radio group Audacy’s request for a temporary waiver of FCC foreign-ownership rules is set to expire Wednesday, and FCC officials told us they're expecting its approval, though at least one Republican will dissent on what in several past proceedings has been a routine request. Audacy, which owns more than 200 stations and is the second-largest radio group in the U.S., is seeking the waiver to allow it to first complete a bankruptcy restructuring that has George Soros-affiliated entities purchasing its stock. The FCC’s Democrats have already voted the item, agency officials told us.

“The FCC should not be creating this special Soros shortcut,” said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in a June television appearance on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle. The agency has granted similar requests from broadcasters in bureau-level decisions at least five times while Carr has served on the commission. The Media Bureau previously granted similar requests for broadcaster waivers from foreign-ownership review related to bankruptcy from Cumulus in 2018, iHeart in 2019, Liberman Television in 2019, America-CV station group in 2021 and Alpha Media in 2021, an agency spokesperson said. The Wireline and Wireless bureaus have also granted similar applications for companies such as Windstream Holdings in 2020 and Fusion Connect in 2019.

Audacy is seeking a waiver for a foreign-ownership review that's normally conducted at the bureau level. In virtually every case, requests that an entity be more than 25% foreign-owned are granted. Attorneys we spoke with described the process as a “rubber stamp.” In some cases the agency imposed conditions, such as with iHeart, but it still issued declaratory rulings approving the foreign-ownership requests. “Since the Commission issued its 2013 Declaratory Ruling clarifying the Commission’s position in evaluating foreign investment in broadcast interests, we are not aware of the denial of any broadcast-related Petition for Declaratory Ruling,” an FCC spokesperson emailed.

Although the agency -- under multiple administrations -- has granted similar requests, the Soros-affiliated Fund for Policy Reform's participation in Audacy’s restructuring is the focus of petitions to deny. In addition, the Soros entity's involvement has prompted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to push to make the matter a full FCC vote (see 2408150047). “There is no question that George Soros and his affiliated businesses are looking to control these radio stations to advance their particular brand of activism,” said conservative group Media Research Center in an April petition to deny the waiver. Audacy, the Fund for Policy Reform, the Media Research Center and Commissioners Carr and Nathan Simington didn’t comment.

Audacy’s restructuring will leave the Fund for Policy Reform with an attributable ownership interest after the bankruptcy. The reorganized company will exceed the FCC’s 25% foreign ownership limit, said the radio group’s application. Audacy requested the waiver so that bankruptcy proceedings can finish before it begins petitioning for an FCC declaratory ruling allowing it to exceed the limit. “Bankruptcy is expensive,” said a broadcast attorney familiar with the FCC’s foreign-ownership process. Audacy, like iHeart, Cumulus and other companies before it, doesn’t want its bankruptcy proceeding delayed by the FCC and the Team Telecom foreign-ownership reviews, which can take as long as a year, attorneys told us. The waiver request isn’t a shortcut because those reviews will still happen, as they did for the previous companies undergoing the process, multiple broadcast attorneys told us. It would be “a bad precedent” to require future companies going through bankruptcies to be forced to wait for FCC foreign-ownership review, one attorney told us. The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector, formerly known as Team Telecom, is an interagency review body composed of DOJ, DOD and the Department of Homeland Security.

Widely seen as funding progressive causes and politicians, Soros is a frequent target of right-wing groups, including the Media Research Center. A post on MRC’s website titled “George Soros: Propaganda Powerhouse,” accuses Soros of promoting ”radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism.” Rep. Nicholas Langworthy, R-N.Y., in a letter to the FCC in May, wrote, “I believe that this sale is the latest in a series of moves by a partisan, progressive billionaire to consolidate control over the media and flood hundreds of local radio stations with far-left ideology and propaganda.”