February marked 20 years since then-President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated several media industries, and has led to fewer media choices for consumers. Just five years after the act passed Salon reported that just two radio companies — Clear Channel and Viacom’s Infinity Broadcasting — controlled one-third of all radio advertising revenue, and The Hill reported that only four phone companies — Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest — handled 95 percent of local telecommunications service. Today, 97 percent of Americans have at least three choices for mobile phone service. A study from the Federal Communications Commission in 2006 called "Review of the Radio Industry" found that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States increased. At the time the Act was passed in 1996 there was a large pirate radio movement committing civil disobedience on the airwaves to prove that there was room for more stations on the air. A Philadelphia-based pirate group that organized others reported getting calls from commercial radio owners at the time who, forced by the economics the Telecommunications Act created, were being forced to sell their stations to large conglomerates. A Future of Music study in 2002 found that, "Since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Clear Channel (now called iHeartMedia) has grown from 40 stations to 1,240 stations — 30 times more than congressional regulation previously allowed." And that study also found four parent companies control two-thirds of the nation’s radio news format listeners with, Viacom and Disney’s ABC Radio, also control major television networks. Since 1996, joint operating agreements have halved the number of television news organizations in most markets. So while there may be more media choices 20 years after the Telecommunications Act passed, in many formats, those "choices" are controlled by just a handful of companies. Common Cause has said, “In many ways, the Telecom Act failed to serve the public and did not deliver on its promise of more competition, more diversity, lower prices, more jobs and a booming economy.... Instead, the public got more media concentration, less diversity, and higher prices.”