Congress undoing FCC vote
Bipartisan effort to restore media ownership rules still faces challenges

By Camille T. Taiara

Three months ago few media policy analysts thought there was any hope of stopping the Federal Communications Commission from handing even more control over television, radio, and the press to a handful of gargantuan media conglomerates.

But on June 19, just 17 days after the FCC voted to severely curtail regulations limiting consolidation in the media industry, the Senate Commerce Committee voted in bipartisan fashion to roll back the cap on how many households any one television broadcast company can reach – from 45 percent nationwide to the previous 35 percent limit – and to reinstate cross-ownership rules that prohibit a single company from owning TV stations and either daily newspapers or radio stations in the same market.

The 23-member committee also called for the removal of FCC provisions that allow corporations to circumvent limits on the number of radio stations they could own in a given region. Eliminating those provisions would mean that the nation's two largest radio station owners, Clear Channel Communications and Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting Corp., would have to sell off some of their stations.

Sen. Barbara Boxer tacked on an amendment, which also passed, requiring the FCC to hold a minimum of five public hearings in different parts of the country before changing any of its media ownership rules in the future. (The FCC held only one formal hearing, in Richmond, Va., prior to its momentous June 2 vote.)

But the bill still faces considerable hurdles before becoming law. A spokesperson for Senate majority leader Bill Frist told industry newsletter Communications Daily that Frist has not yet taken a position on the bill and will not begin considering whether to forward it to the full Senate floor for a vote until after July 4.

Meanwhile, the bill faces its toughest battle in the House of Representatives, where Energy and Commerce Committee chair Billy Tauzin (R-La.), a staunch supporter of deregulation, is likely to do everything in his power to block a similar bill from going to a vote.

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