In a brief filed at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the Federal Communications Commission says the stay on its current partial lifting of the ban on newspaper-broadcast crossownership should remain in place and court challenges to that order held in abeyance because it is bound to be superseded by a new decision, from new commissioners, based on a changed media marketplace. Broadcasters say the FCC is stalling and that the court needs to put the pedal to the metal. The FCC's media ownership rules have been in limbo for more than a half-decade and the 2008 rules change under FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has never gone into effect, one of the reasons broadcasters had asked the court to get on with hearing the case and lift the stay in the interim so they could get some regulatory certainty. But the FCC said either of those actions would be pointless since it would be coming up with some new rules--under a now-Democratic majority.
