FCC Defends 2017 Broadcast Deregulation in Court

The Federal Communications Commission told the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that it did gauge the impact of its 2017 broadcast deregulation on media ownership diversity and found it would have “no material impact.” That came in a brief to court which is hearing appeals by Prometheus and others of that media ownership deregulation, both from groups that say the FCC was too deregulatory and without properly vetting the impact on diversity, and from those that say it was not deregulatory enough because it only loosened its prohibition on owning two of the top-four stations in a market. The FCC’s deregulatory moves came as part of its congressionally mandated quadrennial review, which also had to be responsive to a Third Circuit remand of its previous review, part of a years-long legal challenge to media deregulation stretching back to the early 2000s.