The FCC has weighed in with the Supreme Court in defense of its order deregulating local broadcast ownership and in opposition to a lower court’s invalidation of that order. The crux of the FCC’s argument is that the lower court repeatedly prevented the commission from repealing or modifying rules it had concluded were no longer in the public interest.
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the FCC/broadcaster appeal of the Third Circuit’s most recent smackdown of the FCC’s broadcast dereg efforts drew a crowd Friday (Oct. 2). That may be because the FCC for almost two decades has been responding to remands from the Circuit as the commission under Republican chairmen tried to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule and other local station ownership restrictions but this is the first time the Supremes will get involved.
Gray Television has filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court backing the FCC’s appeal of a federal court’s smackdown of its broadcast deregulation decision. Gray told the court it was imperative that it hear the FCC appeal, reverse the Third Circuit, and allow the FCC’s “media modernization” to proceed.
