Democratic FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein criticized several points about the commission’s just-released broadcast cross-ownership order.
The commission passed the item Dec. 18 but the agency released it this Monday.
“Apparently, it took the majority that long to finalize issues left unresolved at the time we voted,” they said in a statement.
Copps and Adelstein say there are several loopholes in the partial relaxation of the ban that prohibited one company from owning both a daily newspaper and either a radio or TV station in a market. The recent decision relaxes that rule in the top 20 TV markets if certain criteria are met.
Whether a merger would result in synergies and new services to the market are some of the approval criteria; the Dems say those terms are “squishy.”
