WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the U.S. Supreme Court ready to hear arguments in the FCC and NAB‘s joint appeal of the Third Circuit Federal Appeals Court remand of its local media ownership rule revisions, the Commission — in the final days of leadership under Chairman Ajit Pai — is voting to preserve the status quo with respect to a Fox Corporation request for a permanent waiver allowing it to own multiple TV stations and a newspaper in the nation’s No. 1 market.
The Media Bureau has said no to a permanent waiver request of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule sought by Fox Corporation regarding the continued common ownership of WWOR-9, the MyNetwork TV affiliate serving the New York Tri-State area that is licensed to Secaucus, N.J., and the New York Post.
Instead, the Bureau has granted a temporary waiver.
Why? It is doing so “to preserve the status quo while the fate of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule is resolved,” the FCC announced late Friday.
Absent a waiver, the current rule prohibits common ownership of a daily newspaper and a broadcast station serving the same geographic market.
However, as a result of the long-running dispute over whether the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule remains lawful and justified, the Commission previously granted or extended temporary waivers for the WWOR/New York Post combination in 2001, 2006, and 2014.
Subsequently, the Commission moved to eliminate the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule in 2017, and the combination of WWOR and the Post was authorized by operation of law for nearly two years with no need for a waiver.
Following an appeal, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by a 2-1 vote reversed and remanded the Commission’s decision, thus reinstating the rule.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Third Circuit’s decision and will hear oral arguments on January 19, 2021.
The media marketplace has changed significantly since the adoption of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule in 1975, resulting in repeated Commission efforts to modernize the rule.
Given the pending Supreme Court review of this rule, and the Commission’s 2017 determination, which was unchallenged in the Third Circuit litigation, that the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule is no longer necessary to preserve competition or viewpoint diversity, the Commission determined that it was appropriate to grant a temporary waiver as opposed to a permanent one, until the status of the rule has been resolved.
As a result of today’s Order, Fox may continue to own collectively WWOR and the Post—as well as FOX O&O WNYW-5 in New York, for which Fox had received a permanent waiver in 1993—pending the outcome of the current litigation and, in the event that the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule survives that litigation, until 180 days following the date that a Commission order making a determination reaffirming that the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule remains in the public interest becomes final and unappealable.
“The action in this Order … avoids the prospect of either hastily requiring a divestiture that might prove unnecessary or authorizing a permanent combination while regulatory uncertainty remains over the status of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule,” the Commission said.
