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Radio News: Prometheus challenges FCC ownership rules

Nov 07, 2016 10:45 pm
Broadcasting and Cable reports that the Prometheus Radio Project is challenging parts of the FCC's Aug. 25 quadrennial ownership review, and the legal battle between the non-profit group and the radio regulators continues now for more than a decade in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Prometheus and the Media Mobilizing Project said in their filing that the FCC again failed to satisfy directives from the court by reinstating an earlier definition of eligible entity the court had vacated and remanded, "while citing no additional evidence to show that this definition will promote ownership opportunities [for] minorities and women." Prometheus is challenging the FCC on several issues, including the decision to modify some broadcast ownership rules, "so as to permit increased concentration," as well as its "failure" to treat shared services agreements as attributable ownership interests subject to local market duopoly rules. "While we generally support the decision to retain the ownership rules and reinstate JSA [joint sales agreement] attribution, the Commission's intransigence with respect to getting reliable data to make meaningful efforts to diversify ownership is a serious legal and policy error," said Andrew Schwartzman, one of the attorneys for Prometheus, a Philadelphia-based non-profit group that sprung out of a pirate radio station there.