Twenty-two Senate Democrats on Thursday called on the Federal Communications Commission to not decide on the fate of Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.'s planned $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media until a federal appeals court rules on the deal.
"Your ad hoc approach to media ownership must end," the senators, led by Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, said in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
"The time has come for the Federal Communications Commission to stop making further changes to the nation's broadcast landscape until the agency has conducted and completed a holistic look at the state of broadcasting and the media," the senators said.
They also argued no further action should come until the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, which is "currently deliberating on the legality of your previous media ownership actions," ruled on the deal.
"Failure to do so threatens the heart of localism, diversity, and competitive fairness in local broadcasting," the legislators said.
The three-judge panel last week questioned why the FCC relaxed a rule on how many local TV stations a network could own, effectively gutting the long-held rule keeping their reach at 39 percent of U.S. households.
Sinclair, already is the largest owner of TV stations in the U.S. needs FCC and Justice Department approval for a deal that would give it a massive reach into 72 percent of American homes.
The commission's rule change, reinstituting an old definition that applied to UHF signal reach decades ago, was made just weeks before the Sinclair merger announcement last May.
In its letter, the senators said "we have noted with growing concern your pattern of eliminating the longstanding rules the FCC has maintained to limit local television and radio ownership concentration."
The lawmakers said they called on the FCC last September to "stop your actions to eliminate broadcast ownership limits without first conducting a comprehensive review of the state of media ownership in the country."
But the commission has since "relentlessly continued the dismantling of these rules with apparent disregard for the collective negative effect of your actions on the nation's media landscape," the senators said.
They also contended the commission's "rush to alter the local ownership rules was designed to ease the final restrictions on this merger."
The changes, thereby, would clear "a path to approval with minimal divestitures, even in light of questions about how Sinclair operates its local stations and complies with its public interest obligations.
"The rapid technological and practical changes in the broadcast space in the past several years suggest that the FCC must build a new and thorough record about the state of broadcasting and media today," the senators said.
The review, pending ruling from the appellate court and interim steps recommended by the Democrats "are necessary in the public interest to ensure fairness in the market and to remove any cloud of uncertainty over the agency's decision making in these matters."
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