Now that the Obama Administration has successfully shut down the AT&T-T-Mobile merger, it is setting its sights on Verizon Wireless’ recent spectrum and joint venture deals with cable companies. According to a Bloomberg report, the Department of Justice is reportedly looking at whether the joint venture arrangement Verizon has struck with the nation’s top cable companies violates federal restraint of trade law.

While the AT&T-T-Mobile deal was a straight antitrust case, Verizon’s $3.6 billion deal with SpectrumCo’s owners Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, and $315 million deal with Cox Cable are more complex. In both cases, Verizon solidified its leadership position in the wireless business by adding valuable spectrum. But the parties also cut marketing agreements to sell each others’ products and form a joint venture to integrate wireline and wireless products and services.

The deal, said Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett, amounted to “a partnership between formerly mortal enemies…. All in all, this is a strategic masterstroke for Verizon.”

From the moment Verizon announced the game-changing deals, it raised red flags with public interest groups, who view the Verizon deals as a clever way to get around antitrust charges and at the same time, shut down a potential competitor.

“It amounts to a cease fire, in which Verizon appears to say it is getting out of the video business and cable companies say they are going to get out of the wireless business,” said Andy Schwartzman, the policy director for the Media Access Project. “It will keep in place existing structures rather than allowing new competition. It’s a covenant not to compete,” he said.

In addition to the DOJ, Verizon must also seek approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which will review the deal for its public interest impact. In its FCC application, filed Monday, Verizon argued that the FCC should only review the deal for its transfer of spectrum licenses.

“Because only spectrum is being transferred, and not an operating entity, the proposed transaction will not result in any diminution in competition,” Verizon said in the filing. “Consumers will continue to have all the same choices among wireless providers that they do today.”

Verizon was not immediately available for comment.

Brendan Sasso, The Hill

AT&T abandoned its $39 billion bid to buy T-Mobile on Monday, acknowledging that it couldn’t overcome opposition from the Obama administration.

Both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had moved to block the deal, arguing the merger of the second and fourth largest wireless carriers would stifle competition.

AT&T has agreed to pay T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, a $4 billion breakup fee.

“The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry,” AT&T said in a statement. “It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.”AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company will “continue to be aggressive in leading the mobile Internet revolution.”

He promised AT&T will continue to invest in its network and urged Congress to pass legislation to free up more airwaves for mobile devices.

For AT&T, it’s a disappointing end to a bold business move that seemed to have all the political momentum just a few months ago.

Dozens of Democratic and Republican lawmakers wrote letters urging regulators to approve the deal, and labor unions lobbied in favor of it.

AT&T said the deal would improve service for its customers and allow it to make investments that would create jobs. Many predicted the deal would sail to approval.

But in August, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit that argued the deal would violate antitrust law.

The merger would have created the nation’s largest mobile carrier and would have reduced the number of national firms from four to three. If the deal had been approved, Verizon Wireless and AT&T would have accounted for about 80 percent of the wireless market, with Sprint a distant third.

As AT&T and T-Mobile geared up to defend their deal in the courtroom, the FCC took its own step towards killing the deal. Last month, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recommended holding a months-long administrative hearing to review it, saying he was unconvinced it would benefit the public.

An FCC staff report concluded the merger would harm competition throughout the country and lead to massive layoffs.

AT&T asked a federal judge last week to put the Justice Department trial on hold so it could re-evaluate its options.

Consumer groups which had lobbied against the deal celebrated its demise.

“In this age of cynicism, it is important for the American people to see that Washington does not always go to the highest bidder,” Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, said in a news release. “The Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission stood up to tremendous lobbying pressure as AT&T spent tens of millions of dollars trying to push this merger through.”

Free Press also credited the Obama administration for standing up to the two companies.

“The Obama administration deserves praise and credit for standing up to AT&T’s relentless lobbying and propaganda,” Free Press President Craig Aaron said. “And the American public can breathe a sigh of relief that this time the public interest trumped AT&T’s self-serving attempt to kill off what little competition remains in the wireless market.”

Andrew Schwartzman, policy director of public interest law firm Media Access Project, said the announcement “proves that law trumps politics.”

“This merger would have put us one step away from the monopoly we had during the Ma Bell years,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in a statement. “Wireless telecommunication plays a central role in the 21st century American economy, and I’m relieved that we are no longer at risk of concentrating such enormous power in the hands of AT&T and Verizon.”

Finally getting the hint from the feds, AT&T announcedMonday that it was dropping its $39 billion bid to buy T-Mobile. That leaves AT&T stuck with the status quo, which in some major cities means a frustrating amount of congestion and dropped calls. Meanwhile, rival Verizon Wireless has been gobbling up the wireless frequencies leased but not developed by the major U.S. cable TV operators. Those airwaves should provide the company plenty of roomto expand capacity as smartphone users multiply and traffic booms.

Thus, one of the country’s leading wireless players appears poised to buy its way to greater dominance, but it’s not AT&T.

At least one public-interest group is complaining that Verizon’s deals are more damaging to consumers than AT&T’s long-shot takeover of T-Mobile, but there’s a critical difference: While AT&T sought to buy an actual competitor, Verizon is trying to take out a potential one. Regulators haven’t been especially aggressive in blocking the former, but they’ve been even more reluctant to block the latter.

At issue is the spectrum that cable operators leased in 2006, when the Federal Communications Commission auctioned off licenses for “advanced wireless services.” These airwavesflank the frequency band used for 3G mobile data traffic, and as the AnandTech blog pointed out this month, they can also support 4G services.

Large swaths of the AWS band were leased by the five largest mobile-phone carriers. But the country’s biggest cable TV operators, which banded together to bid for spectrum, were able to lease enough licenses to stitch together a national network. The cable operators said at the time that they weren’t planning to launch a mobile-phone company to compete with the likes of Verizon and AT&T. Instead, they said the purchase gave them “flexibility and strategic options.”

The airwaves grew in value over the following five years, but the licenses remained unused. This month, Verizon announced a pair of deals to buy the licenses held by various members of the cable operators’ consortium — firstwith Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, then with Cox, which had launched a mobile-phone service only to start phasing it out earlier this year. (The deals netted cable operators more than $1 billion in profit, a nice “strategic option.”) It also announced a swapwith Leap Wireless to exchange some of Verizon’s turf in the 700 Mhz band for some of Leap’s AWS licenses.

The cable companies plan to market Verizon’s wireless service, and Verizon has agreed to market their video services. The joint marketing arrangement strongly suggests that Verizon won’t be expanding its own pay-TV offering, FiOS TV, any time soon.

This prospect worries Andrew Jay Schwartzman, policy director for the Media Access Project public interest group. After the Cox deal was announced, Schwartzman said:

Cox Communications now has joined the other large cable operators in a deal that insures that Verizon and the cable industry will stop competing with each other.  It is clear Verizon will stop building out its FiOS video service.  From here on out, cable won’t do wireless, and Verizon won’t do video.  This new cartel means higher prices and less competition.  The cease-fire is more important to consumers than the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile transaction because it is much more likely to happen.

A more benign possibility is that Verizon is just more comfortable selling communications services than content services. Either way, though, its decision to partner with cable companies instead of the two sides competing with each other is disappointing for consumers, even if it may translate into zippier mobile data services in the short run.

For Immediate Release

Contact: Andrew Jay Schwartzman
202.454.5681
andys@mediaaccess.org

VERIZON “PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT” DOES NOT ALLAY CONCERNS ABOUT SPECTRUM DEAL WITH CABLE COMPANIES

Verizon has submitted an application seeking FCC approval of spectrum it seeks to purchase from a consortium of the largest cable television companies. Although the transaction also involves elaborate joint marketing agreements, Verizon argues to the FCC that those aspects of the deal are not relevant to the FCC’s consideration of the matter. Media Access Project Senior Vice President and Policy Director of Media Access Project today issued the following statement in response:

No matter how forcefully Verizion claims that this is “a spectrum only transaction,” it is much more than that. The FCC’s mandate is to look at the totality of the circumstances to decide if a proposed transfer is in the public interest. This one raises serious questions about the state of competition in both the wireless and video markets.

Media Access Project is a nonprofit, public interest law firm working to protect free expression, innovation, and economic growth by promoting low cost, universal access to media outlets and communications services.

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The scandal, they say, is an opportunity to raise awareness of — and, they hope, objection to — media consolidation at a time when the American government is reviewing the rules that govern how much companies like News Corporation, Comcast and the Walt Disney Company can own.

“For those of us who’ve been warning about the dangers of too much media power concentrated in too few corporate hands, this scandal is a godsend,” said Jeff Cohen, the founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College.

The scandal is also giving Democratic lawmakers an opportunity to call for more attention to the practices of such companies.

Representative Bobby Rush, a Democrat of Illinois and a past critic of Mr. Murdoch, questioned in an interview whether the media mogul had been allowed to amass too much media power. “We can’t forget the fundamental tenet of media ownership in the United States. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege. And it’s a privilege based on trust and responsibility,” he said.

Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat of Wisconsin, said that along with media consolidation, the scandal raised questions about “privacy expectations in the digital world” and about how “we support freedom of the press while ensuring the integrity and truthfulness of the press.”

There are few if any immediate threats to Mr. Murdoch’s American portfolio, which includes the Fox network, two dozen local television stations, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and the 20th Century Fox movie studio. The Federal Communications Commission signaled last week that it regarded the hacking scandal as isolated to Britain.

But the scandal in Britain could influence the F.C.C. review of media ownership rules, especially if there is perceptible public discord about powerful media moguls like Mr. Murdoch.

The discord is already evident in Britain, where politicians have talked openly about considering new laws that would lead to a breakup of the News Corporation, which owns 39 percent of British Sky Broadcasting as well as numerous newspapers there.

In the United States, politicians have called for investigations into whether News Corporation entities hacked into the phones of Americans, including the victims of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating; on Tuesday, Mr. Murdoch said that he was aware of no evidence that any 9/11 American victims had been affected.

But media reform groups like Free Press, which advocates for more diversity in media ownership, say their interest extends far beyond any single investigation.

“I think this is the moment to contend with the serious damage the Murdoch empire has done to our media system over the past few decades,” Craig Aaron, the head of that group, said last week.

The 2004 book “The New Media Monopoly” by Ben H. Bagdikian found that more than half of the radio and television stations, daily newspapers, magazines, publishers and movie studios in the United States were owned by five companies. In January, in the most recent case of consolidation, the government approved a bid by Comcast to take control of NBC Universal.

Proponents of media mergers say such combinations improve consumer access to news, information and entertainment. They say the Internet has fostered competition, creating new choices for consumers.

Groups like Free Press say the opposite — that such combinations reduce the country’s journalistic corps and decrease the diversity of voices in print and on the air. Mr. Aaron said he sensed that most Americans were aware of big media brands like Fox and NBC but unaware that their owners also controlled dozens of other brands. Media companies present an obstacle to awareness: “Most media outlets don’t like to cover themselves.”

But “when people find out just how much those companies own, they are worried about it and want to know more,” he said, adding that the who-owns-what chart was the most popular feature on the Free Press Web site.

This week, the F.C.C. declined to comment on the status of its ownership review, which is supposed to assess whether the existing rules are effectively promoting diversity, localism and competition. Earlier this month, an appeals court upheld most of the steps that the commission took in 2007 to loosen ownership rules, but it rejected on procedural grounds one rule that enabled more companies to own a newspaper and a station in the same local market.

Cable outlets like Fox News — the scourge of liberals and a symbol of Mr. Murdoch’s political power — are not under the purview of the F.C.C. or its ownership review, but the News Corporation’s 27 local stations are, because each is dependent on a federal license for use of the public airwaves.

License revocations are extremely rare, and analysts said they did not anticipate problems for the stations as a result of the hacking scandal. But an F.C.C. provision assessing the character of a station owner could be invoked by the News Corporation’s opponents when the company’s licenses for Fox and MyNetwork stations come up for renewal.

The broader problem for Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Aaron suggested, is that he “had an air of invincibility” before the scandal became one of the most talked-about news stories in Britain and the United States. “Whatever happens now, that’s gone,” he said.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the public interest group Media Access Project, said he doubted that loyal viewers of Fox News, a News Corporation property, would change their views.

But, he added, “a much larger group of people have an instinctive mistrust of powerful media, and they understand that consolidation of media ownership is not good for democracy.”

“For better or worse,” Mr. Schwartzman said, “News Corporation’s misdeeds will fuel that skepticism.”

WASHINGTON—Federal regulators may face more pressure to overhaul laws governing media ownership in the U.S. after a federal appeals court Thursday threw out a 2008 government decision to relax restrictions on companies seeking to control both newspapers and television stations.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected Federal Communications Commission rules that made it easier for media companies to own a TV station and newspaper in the same market. The court said the FCC erred by failing to give the public enough time to comment on the rules, and sent them back to the agency for further review.

Former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced the rule change in a newspaper editorial in 2007 and allowed “only 28 days for response, not the usual 90 days,” the appeals court said.

The court’s decision upheld much of the then Republican-controlled FCC’s 2008 revamp of the nation’s media-ownership rules. But it returns the highly politicized issue of newspaper and television cross-ownership restrictions to an agency where power has shifted toward Democrats, and which has shown more interest lately in the Internet than older forms of media.

In late 2007, the FCC narrowly voted to allow companies to own newspapers and television stations in the nation’s 20 largest media markets, loosening cross-ownership restrictions that had applied for more than three decades. Under the rules, a company in the largest 20 markets could own both a newspaper and a TV station as long as there were at least eight media outlets in the market.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama was among 25 senators who wrote the FCC in 2007 asking the agency to reconsider Mr. Martin’s changes and threatening to block them.

It isn’t clear if the FCC’s current chairman, Julius Genachowski, will renew his Republican predecessor’s efforts to loosen the ownership curbs. He has remained silent on the issue in public. The agency is supposed to review the rules every four years, but the agency is behind on its scheduled 2010 review and still has significant work left to do, according to FCC officials.

In response to Thursday’s court decision, FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, said in a statement that the FCC “is currently engaged in a statutorily mandated further review of its media-ownership rules. With an updated record and this supportive decision, the agency should be able to take appropriate steps to ensure that the nation’s media marketplace remains healthy and vibrant.”

The rules have caused political trouble for the FCC for years. In 2003, then FCC Chairman Michael Powell sought to deregulate and eliminate some rules pertaining to local-media ownership. Congress moved to revoke some of the changes.

Four years later, when the FCC debated loosening TV and newspaper cross-ownership rules, media companies including Media General Inc. and News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, complained that the agency didn’t go far enough. But media companies didn’t lobby particularly heavily on the issue.

“There have been sweeping changes in the media landscape since most of the broadcast ownership rules were adopted decades ago,” said National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton in a statement Thursday. He said the trade group “believes that modest reform of rules to allow free and local broadcasters to compete successfully in a universe of national pay-TV and radio platforms is warranted.”

Over the past few years changes in the media industry, including declining subscribership and advertising revenues, has significantly lessened investors’ interest in buying newspapers. In 2007, Mr. Martin argued that cross-ownership rules weren’t necessary in the Internet age and that relaxing the rules wouldn’t hurt consumers.

Proponents of a diverse media fought the changes, saying that further consolidation of the marketplace left too few sources of original news content for consumers. “This decision is a vindication of the public’s right to have a diverse media environment,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director of Media Access Project, one of the group’s that challenged the FCC rules in court.

By Timothy Karr, HuffPost Media

It’s not every day that you can celebrate a win for the public over big media. But on Thursday a federal appeals court threw out an attempt by the FCC and industry titans to gut media ownership limits.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit threw out a 2007 FCC rule change that would have allowed a single company to own a daily newspaper and several broadcast stations in one local market.

Such a change could have opened the floodgates to media mergers, leading to further layoffs in newsrooms while leeching diverse perspectives from local media.

The court also upheld the FCC’s decision to retain its other local broadcast ownership restrictions, and instructed the agency to better consider how its rules affect broadcast ownership by people of color.

Sweeping Victory for the Public Interest

The decision is a sweeping victory for the public interest. The court rejected arguments made by broadcast and newspaper giants while exposing the FCC’s repeated failures to rein in runaway consolidation.

“We won on almost every point,” said Andrew Schwartzman, Senior Vice President and Policy Director of Media Access Project, who argued before the court against the FCC’s rules.

“This decision is a vindication of the public’s right to have a diverse media environment… Now that the Court has directed the FCC to make sure the public is not ignored, we can look forward to having a right to meaningful participation as the FCC looks at these questions again.”

“The court wisely concluded that competition in the media – not more concentration – will provide Americans with the local news and information they need and want,” said Corie Wright, Free Press policy counsel, who also argued the case on behalf of a coalition of public advocacy groups.

The case, Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC, is the second time the Third Circuit jettisoned FCC attempts to relax its media ownership rules. The first was in 2004, when the same panel of judges struck down then-Chairman Michael Powell’s attempts to gut media ownership limits.

“I was there when Andrew Schwartzman and his colleagues put together their case for the people,” said Hannah Sassaman, a longtime organizer at the Prometheus Radio Project who is now working with the New America Foundation. “The court threw out the FCC’s rules because these incredible lawyers and the millions of people they represented proved that letting one company own too much media hurts our communities.

Big Media Lobby Rebuked

Large media corporations have repeatedly lobbied the FCC to lift its 35-year-old ban on “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership”. Had they been successful — and these rules gone into effect — a single company could have owned the main daily newspaper, eight radio stations, three television stations and a major cable provider in the same town.

The court decision vacated the FCC’s plan to relax the ban on such common ownership, finding that the Commission’s rule-making procedures were highly irregular and failed to give the public adequate notice and opportunity to weigh in.

The court also determined that record evidence supports the FCC’s decision not to relax any of the other media ownership rules.

“Today the court confirmed that the FCC’s media ownership rules are not only constitutional but necessary to preserve competition, as well as to promote diverse sources of news and information for the American people,” said Wright.

The FCC’s Diversity Problem

The court also blasted the FCC for repeated failures to consider the impact of media consolidation on broadcast license ownership by people of color.

Free Press research from 2007 exposed the FCC’s failure to foster minority ownership of radio and television stations: racial or ethnic minorities own just 7.7 percent of all full-power commercial broadcast radio stations and just 3.26 percent of all TV stations, though they account for 33 percent of the U.S. population.

The court’s findings come as the FCC embarks on yet another review of media ownership limits this summer. And while the court upheld the need for curbs, industry groups are still pushing the FCC to eliminate them, just as public interest groups are organizing against new and covert forms of media consolidation.

Now the FCC “cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that existing media consolidation levels adversely impact the amount and quality of news from diverse sources,” Wright said.

A federal court rejected a rule change from the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday that would have made it easier for a single company to own both a newspaper and broadcast TV station in the same local market on technical grounds.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third District ruled the FCC failed to give stakeholders adequate opportunity to comment before relaxing a three-decade ban on companies owning both types of media outlets.

Public interest groups that challenged the FCC’s rules claimed a victory despite the fact the court upheld most of the rest of the FCC’s 2008 media ownership decision.

“The FCC majority knew that its effort to allow more media concentration was politically and legally unworkable, so it tried to end-run the procedural protections that are designed to give the public the right to participate in agency proceedings,” said Media Access Project policy director Andrew Jay Schwartzman.

“It was disapointing that FCC Chairman Genachowski chose to defend his predecessor’s erroneous action, but now that the Court has directed the FCC to make sure the public is not ignored, we can look forward to having a right to meaningful participation as the FCC looks at these questions again.”

An appeal from the FCC is unlikely as the Commission is already undergoing its quadrennial review of media ownership rules and will likely address the issue through that process. The new rule would have essentially put a thumb or the scale in favor of allowing a firm to own both a newspaper and broadcast station in top 20 markets and a thumb on the scale against such transactions in smaller markets.

The FCC has maintained since 2003 that the ban on newspapers own TV stations and vice versa is no longer justified; the new rules would permit some transactions that wouldn’t previously be allowed. Still, the Commission framed the court’s decision as a win for the agency.

“The Third Circuit’s approval of the 2008 ownership rules for broadcast stations affirms the FCC’s authority to promote competition, localism, and diversity in the modern media marketplace,” said FCC general counsel Austin Shlick.

“With an updated record and this supportive decision, the agency should be able to take appropriate steps to ensure that the nation’s media marketplace remains healthy and vibrant.”

The broadcasters file arguments in favor of most relaxing media ownership rules due to increasing competition cable and the Web, which the court broadly rejected.

“There have been sweeping changes in the media landscape since most of the broadcast ownership rules were adopted decades ago,” said National Association of Broadcasters executive vice president of communications Dennis Wharton.

“NAB believes that modest reform of rules to allow free and local broadcasters to compete successfully in a universe of national pay TV and radio platforms is warranted.”

The FCC will consider the newspaper-broadcast ownership rule along as part of the review of media ownership rules, at which point the Commission can choose to either pursue the same course or institute new rules.

A federal appellate court turned back the FCC’s effort to relax its limits on ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the same market, ruling that the agency failed to give adequate notice when they made the change in 2007.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals means that the FCC will again have to take up the rules, which supporters argued was necessary to strengthen local news gathering in the face of declining ad revenue.

The new rules lifted the ban on cross ownership in the 20 largest media markets.

Public interest groups had argued that they were not given adequate time to comment on the proposed changes, made under then FCC-chairman Kevin Martin.

”We won on almost every point,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director of the Media Access Project, which represented Prometheus Radio Project in challenging the changes. ”This decision is a vindication of the public’s right to have a diverse media environment. The FCC majority knew that its effort to allow more media concentration was politically and legally unworkable, so it tried to end-run the procedural protections that are designed to give the public the right to participate in agency proceedings.”

The court also said that the FCC also failed to consider the impact of its new rules on minority ownership of media outlets.

Judges Thomas Ambro and Julio Fuentes found fault with the FCC’s rule change, while Judge Anthony Scirica dissented.

The FCC is currently undertaking another review of its media ownership rules. In a statement, the agency said that they ‘’should be able to take appropriate steps to ensure that the nation’s media marketplace remains healthy and vibrant.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court has restored a longstanding ban that prevents media companies from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same market.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission didn’t give the public adequate opportunity to comment on new rules that lifted the ban in the 20 largest media markets. The appeals court sent the rules back to the FCC to be rewritten.

The so-called cross-ownership ban dates back to 1975 — a time when newspapers dominated the media industry. In 2007, then-FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Bush administration appointee, moved to ease those restrictions in the biggest media markets. He argued that the ban no longer made sense in a media landscape that had been upended by the Internet and had left many daily newspapers struggling for survival.

Public interest groups challenged Martin’s move and warned that too much consolidation would lead to less diversity in news coverage.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, head of the nonprofit law firm Media Access Project, which led the challenge, hailed Thursday’s ruling. “We’re extremely pleased that the court recognized that the public has a right to a diverse media environment,” he said.

Congress requires the FCC to review its media-ownership rules every four years. Those rules include the cross-ownership restrictions and limits on the number of television and radio stations that one company can own in a market. Thursday’s ruling comes as the current FCC, now under Democratic control, is seeking to wrap up its latest review, which began last year.

In a statement Thursday, the FCC said the current review will allow it to take “appropriate steps to ensure that the nation’s media marketplace remains healthy and vibrant.”