Clearchannel busted?

["L. Bird" <pkeets@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a surprise.  The FCC voted recently to loosen regulations restricting 
the number of media concerns one company could own, and the legistlative 
branch seems to be moving to block the change.  The article is in the NY 
Times and I think registration is required, so I'll post the relevant 
excerpt here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/business/media/19CND-RULE.html?ex=1056686400&en=ca40e0d07634acf0&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

> Senate Begins Process to Reverse New F.C.C. Rules on Media
By STEPHEN LABATON


WASHINGTON, June 19  Moving with unusual speed, the Senate began today the 
legislative process of reversing the recent decision by the Federal 
Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules and enable the 
nation's largest newspaper and broadcasting conglomerates to grow larger.

A broadly bipartisan group of the Senate Commerce Committee approved 
legislation by voice vote to restore the previous lower limits on the number 
of television stations a single company can own and to reimpose most of the 
restrictions that prevent a company from owning both a newspaper and a radio 
or television station in the same city. The vote was a stinging rebuke of 
the F.C.C.'s chairman, Michael K. Powell, the architect of the deregulation.


The legislation has broad support in the Senate but faces an uphill battle 
in the House of Representatives, which is more receptive to the new rules 
adopted by the commission. The Bush administration has also endorsed the 
F.C.C.'s new rules.

But the measure approved today was co-sponsored by Senator Ted Stevens, the 
Alaska Republican who heads the Appropriations Committee, raising the 
possibility that it could be attached to must-pass appropriations 
legislation. Such a move might be a way to circumvent opposition in the 
House from such members as Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana 
Republican who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has 
applauded the F.C.C.'s relaxed rules.

At a time when Washington's major political institutions and federal courts 
have been dominated by deregulatory thinkers, today's action in the Senate 
was remarkable both because of the pace of the legislation and the depths of 
criticism of the F.C.C. by Democrats and Republicans.

The committee acted even though the F.C.C. has yet to issue the final rules 
it approved by a narrow and rancorously partisan vote the week before last.

In one area, radio ownership, the committee went further than merely 
reversing the commission. It approved a measure that would force the 
nation's largest radio companies, most notably Clear Channel Communications, 
to divest themselves of some stations.

<snip>

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