On November 17, 2017 the FCC Weed Whacker was put to action by a whipper snapper and two of his GOP colleagues at the Commission.
In a party-line 3-2 vote, an Order was approved that allowed for a series of deregulatory rule changes for broadcast media, namely the end of cross-ownership restrictions that date to an era when “The Hustle” was the top song on AM Top 40 stations.
The Sept. 23, 2019 Third Circuit ruling that remanded these rule changes put a stop to the FCC’s desire to redo these rules.
Should the Supreme Court reverse the lower court’s ruling, what rule changes will go into effect? Here’s a review of what’s at stake for broadcast media.
AN END TO POST-WATERGATE REGULATIONS
The FCC’s two Democratic Commissioners were vociferous in their opposition.
They cheered the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that send the cross-ownership rule rewrite back to the Commission, giving them an option to rewrite them or appeal to the Supreme Court.
The latter is a route suggested in November 2017 by Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who dissented and said Congress or the courts should decide which path to take.
With the 3-2 vote, the following rule changes were made:
- Elimination of the Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule. The GOP majority said it is no longer necessary to promote viewpoint diversity and prevented combinations that would enable both broadcasters and newspapers to better serve the public interest.
- Elimination of the Radio/Television Cross-Ownership Rule. Republicans on the FCC said this is also no longer needed to promote viewpoint diversity in the modern media marketplace.
- Removal of the “Eight-Voices Test” from the Local Television Ownership Rule. Instead, the Commission will use a potentially Media Bureau-clogging “case-by-case review option in the Top-Four Prohibition to better reflect the competitive conditions in local markets.”
- Erasure of the attribution rule for television JSAs. Why? The GOP leadership at the FCC believes they are “beneficial agreements that serve the public interest by allowing television broadcasters to better serve their local markets.”
- Maintaining the disclosure requirement for Shared Services Agreements involving commercial television stations.
The Pai Commission largely moved forward roughly 15 months after the Wheeler Commission, via a 3-2 Democratic vote, left the rules written in 1975 largely unchanged.
However, the Wheeler Commission went a step further by also reinstating the television Joint Sales Agreement (JSA) attribution rule, and the revenue-based eligible entity standard for ownership diversity purposes. It also required the disclosure of shared services agreements (SSAs) for commercial television stations.
