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Bozola
Skeptic Friend
USA
166 Posts |
 Posted - 07/26/2001 : 10:32:20
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As if we really needed more FOX affiliates....
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By Kalpana Srinivasan, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) A divided Federal Communications Commission cleared News Corp.'s $4.4 billion bid to buy television station owner Chris-Craft, giving the companies a temporary reprieve from government rules that restrict media concentration.
With final approval in hand, Fox Television Stations, part of the News Corp. family, can complete the deal that gives it 32 stations, reaching nearly 41 percent of U.S. viewers.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell defended the agency's review and decision, even as his Democratic colleagues and public interest groups accused the commission of giving up on its duty to protect diversity on the nation's airwaves.
Technically, the deal brings News Corp. in violation of a federal rule which only allows a company to reach 35 percent of the population through its TV stations. The deal also runs afoul of a prohibition on one company owning broadcast stations and newspapers in the same market.
But on both fronts, the FCC delayed enforcing its rules. The commission decided to hold off on requiring the company to meet the 35 percent cap until an appeals court rules on a legal challenge to the limit which is being raised by Fox and other networks.
On the newspaper-broadcast restriction, the agency gave the company two years to come into compliance. News Corp. already has a special waiver to operate the New York Post and one TV station in that market. The commission concluded that the old waiver did not extend to the company acquiring a second station in the city.
Still, the company may not have to shed any assets if the FCC relaxes that rule within the next two years. In the coming months, the commission plans to look at whether to modify thequarter-century-old restriction and some believe that under new chairman Michael Powell, the agency will look to ease or even eliminate that restriction.
Merger critics said the two-year waiver would give News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and others plenty of time to lobby for a relaxation of the rule. They also took aim at Powell, suggesting his leadership would open the door for even greater consolidation in the industry.
"He's signaling a much more casual attitude to media mergers," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the public interest firm Media Access Project. "This will probably will embolden potential merger applicants to proceed."
Commissioner Gloria Tristani, a Democrat, went even further. "This decision shows the lengths the commission will go to avoid standing in the way of media mergers."
Powell dismissed the charges, saying the approval clearly fell within the guidelines of the commission's rules and the waivers followed agency precedent.
"If the majority was on the crusade she suggests, then the commission would have granted permanent waivers of our rules, which it clearly did not," Powell wrote in response to Tristani.
The FCC also determined that the deal did not violate agency rules limiting foreign ownership of U.S. communications companies. News Corp., is a foreign-owned business, but under the ownership structure proposed by the company, the new station licenses will be held by Fox Television Stations, majority-owned by Murdoch, who is an American citizen.
The merger boosts News Corp.'s presence in some of the nation's largest markets. Under the deal, the company gets nine of Chris-Craft's stations, giving it two TV stations each in New York, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
To resolve concerns raised by both the Justice Department and the FCC, Chris-Craft must shed its ABC affiliate in Salt Lake City. Without that, News Corp. would have owned two of Salt Lake's top four television stations.
News Corp.'s television division owns the Fox network and 23 television stations. The company also owns Fox movie studios, the HarperCollins book publisher and the New York Post.
Bozola
- Practicing skeet for the Rapture.
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 08/03/2001 : 19:49:07 [Permalink]
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That will not directly affect me, because I seldom watch television and consider television news too boring. I get my news from other (more intellectual) sources. This recent FOX move is awful, but television (to me) is for the *intellectually challenged*. It does not need to be, but its costs make it necessary to attract an inordinant number of viewers to pay its way.
ljbrs
Perfection Is a State of Growth... |
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