FCC, NAB Want Circuit Court To Reconsider Ownership Rules

Thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a Bill Clinton-era law that overhauled regulation of media, there's a big brawl that inevitably occurs every four years in court. The FCC undertakes a quadrennial review of its broadcast ownership rules, and groups file legal challenges complaining that the agency skirted its duties and came to unjustifiable conclusions.

"Here we are again," began a Sept. 23 opinion by 3rd Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro.

Except this time, according to The Hollywood Reporter, there was some difference. Thanks to the election of Donald Trump, the conservatives, led by chairman Ajit Pai, got voting control over the FCC, and they've pursued a deregulatory regime with fervor. Out went a rule banning common ownership of a daily newspaper and broadcast station in a single market as well as a restrictions on mergers that would leave fewer than eight independently owned stations in the market. These changes, among others, caused civil rights and public interest groups to file their own court challenges, which led to a scathing 3rd Circuit decision two months ago that halted the FCC's action plan.

On Thursday, the FCC and others moved for reconsideration before a fuller panel at the 3rd Circuit. The agency describes a situation where its powers have been neutered over the past couple decades while begging for deference and restoration "as the congressionally empowered overseer of media ownership regulation."

The National Association of Broadcasters has joined with the FCC in seeking a full court hearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals' three-judge panel decision vacating most of the FCC's broadcast dereg decision.

Broadcasters are arguing that the panel was wrong to reject the FCC's reasonable balancing of its obligation to consider competition with its policy of promoting diversity (the court vacated the dereg because it said the FCC had not sufficiently considered its impact on diversity), and that the FCC had "properly amended its ownership rules based on competitive changes in the marketplace."

The FCC filed its petition earlier in the day Thursday (Nov. 7), but NAB, joined by Nexstar, the News Media Alliance (one of the FCC's deregulatory moves was to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule), and Fox, was not far behind in seeking full court (en banc) review.