FCC Grants 30-Day Extension For Cross-Ownership Filings

The Federal Communications Commission has granted a group of broadcasters a 30-day extension on the Oct 7 deadline for filing amendments to their pending requests for a waiver of the FCC's new adjusted newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule, which the Commission says went into effect July 9. The broadcasters were scheduled to buttress their cases for the combos with information, but want an extension of the deadline until 90 days after a federal court rules on a number of challenges to that rule change, a decision that likely won't come for many months. The FCC gave them another 30 days while it considers the request for the longer extension. The waiver requests predated the rule change and all include combinations of multiple stations and/or newspapers that the FCC said would not have been appropriate to grant "across-the-board," but would instead look at them on a case-by-case basis using the new public interest standards it was applying for requests for newspaper-broadcast combos per the changed rules. Those include showings of impact on diversity of independent voices, particularly news and information. In their request not to have to file the additional information necessary for that case-by-case review, the broadcasters argued that it was a time-intensive process and that, additionally, the uncertain legal status of the rules leaves unclear "precisely what criteria the Commission ultimately will use to conduct waiver analyses and whether it will be able to apply those factors with reasonable certainty."