FCC Seeks Delay Of Court Review of Ownership Rules

The Federal Communications Commission asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to once again hold off on considering appeals of its 2008 relaxation of the broadcast-newspaper crossownership rule until it completes its current 2010 review of all broadcast ownership rules. "There is no guarantee that any decision by the court in these cases regarding the reasonableness of the prior commission's 2008 order will bear any relationship to the judgments the current commission makes in the first instance in the already-commenced 2010 ... review," FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick wrote in a letter to the court Wednesday. A law mandates that the FCC review its media ownership rules every four years with the intent of eliminating or relaxing those that no longer makes sense. The 2008 action was the result of the 2006 review.