On June 2, 2003, the Federal Communications Commission modified five of its media ownership rules, easing restrictions on the ownership of multiple television stations (nationally and in local markets) and on local media cross-ownership, and tightening restrictions on the ownership of multiple radio stations in local markets. The new rules have never gone into effect. Sec. 629 of the FY2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 108-199) instructs the FCC to modify its new National Television Ownership rule to allow a broadcast network to own and operate local broadcast stations that reach, in total, at most 39% of U.S. television households. On June 24, 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ("Third Circuit"), in Prometheus Radio Project vs. Federal Communications Commission, found the FCC did not provide reasoned analysis to support its specific local ownership limits and therefore remanded portions of the new local ownership rules back to the FCC and extended its stay of those rules. Until the FCC crafts new rules approved by the Third Circuit: ! common ownership of a full-service broadcast station and a daily newspaper is prohibited when the broadcast station's service contour encompasses the newspaper's city of publication. Combinations that pre-date 1975 ...

This report assesses the state of current knowledge about the likely effects of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) restrictions on the ownership of broadcasting stations and cable TV systems, to reach judgments about the desirability of modifying or eliminating existing FCC ownership regulations. It examines the evidence on the effects of group ownership of broadcast stations, concentrated regional ownership, common ownership of broadcast stations within a local market, television station-cable system cross-ownership, and telephone-cable cross-ownership. The report reaches four broad conclusions: (1) Concentrated broadcast station ownership leads neither to large operating efficiencies nor to anticompetitive behavior; (2) there is little or no basis for the FCC's group ownership rules, some support exists for rules limiting regional concentration, and stronger support exists for rules that limit cross-ownership within narrow geographic areas; (3) there is no compelling basis for lifting the telephone-cable system cross-ownership ban; and (4) present FCC rules, and many of the proposals for their repeal or modification, are often deficient because they fail to take into account actual competitive conditions.

On June 2, 2003, the Federal Communications Commission modified five of its media ownership rules, easing restrictions on the ownership of multiple television stations (nationally and in local markets) and on local media cross-ownership, and tightening restrictions on the ownership of multiple radio stations in local markets. The new rules have never gone into effect. Sec. 629 of the FY2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 108-199) instructs the FCC to modify its new National Television Ownership rule to allow a broadcast network to own and operate local broadcast stations that reach, in total, at most 39% of U.S. television households. On June 24, 2004, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ("Third Circuit"), in Prometheus Radio Project vs. Federal Communications Commission, found the FCC did not provide reasoned analysis to support its specific local ownership limits and therefore remanded portions of the new local ownership rules back to the FCC and extended its stay of those rules. Several media companies and media associations sought appeals at the Supreme Court, based in part on challenging the continued viability of the spectrum scarcity rationale for broadcast regulation, but on June 13, 2005 the Court declined to consider the appeals. In June 2006, the FCC adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on how to address the issues raised by the Third Circuit and initiating a statutorily-required quadrennial review of all of its media ownership rules, but did not propose specific rule changes. In November 2006, the FCC announced that it had commissioned 10 economic studies of media ownership, which are expected to be completed and made available for public comment during 2007.

We thus remand for the Commission to justify or modify its approach to setting numerical limits.4 As a result of the Third Circuit's stay and remand of the broadcast local ownership rules that the FCC had adopted in 2003,5 the broadcast media ownership rules that had been in place prior to the FCC's adoption of its Order on June 2, 2003 were reinstated-except that in the interim 1 For a detailed d [...] Every proposed newspaper- broadcast combination in which the signal of the broadcast station encompasses the entire community in which the newspaper is published is subject to a public interest determination with three distinct steps.11 6 In the Matter of 2006 Quadrennial Regulatory Review-Review of the Commission's Broadcast Ownership Rules and Other Rules Adopted Pursuant to Section 202 of the T [...] Since the Third Circuit found that the FCC had failed to justify the numerical limits in the rules it had adopted in 2003, and the new FCC rule incorporates a number of numerical limits in both its positive and negative public interest presumptions, the 2007 Order discussed the record evidence underlying each of the numerical elements in its new newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule. [...] Under the standard for "failing" stations, a waiver is presumed to be in the public interest if the applicant satisfies each of the following criteria: (1) one of the merging stations has had all- day audience share of 4% or lower; (2) the financial condition of one of the merging stations is poor; (3) and the merger will produce public interest benefits. [...] The ownership limits currently in place are those that the FCC adopted in 1996 to codify the language in Section 202(b)(1) of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, but, as a result of the Third Circuit agreeing in rehearing to lift the portion of its stay relating to the FCC's new methodology for defining local radio markets, those markets are defined using that new methodology.