The FCC has had four different administrations to change ownership laws. Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden. Two FCC chairmen tried to do it under Bush. Once by Michael Powell in 2003, and then in 2008 by Kevin Martin. Both times, they were rebuked, and overturned by Congress:
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Audacy Filed For Bankruptcy
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The FCC has had four different administrations to change ownership laws. Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden. Two FCC chairmen tried to do it under Bush. Once by Michael Powell in 2003, and then in 2008 by Kevin Martin. Both times, they were rebuked, and overturned by Congress:
Congress is so woefully dysfunctional, with the House in particular verging on completely broken because of a handful of extremist idiots, the FCC could probably try again, and they might actually succeed, considering that said idiots are more concerned with, among other things, sabotaging and hate-speeching (is that a word? It is now!) not only their speaker (that they elected), but also their fellow Republican and Democratic colleagues at every opportunity rather than actually doing their jobs, which includes keeping entities such as the FCC in check. What ever happened to teamwork and cooperation?The FCC has had four different administrations to change ownership laws. Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden. Two FCC chairmen tried to do it under Bush. Once by Michael Powell in 2003, and then in 2008 by Kevin Martin. Both times, they were rebuked, and overturned by Congress:
I suppose when the FCC's attempts at ownership rule changes were overturned, it was probably appropriate, as the last thing anyone wants is a too-big-to-fail multimedia juggernaut with a monopoly so large that nobody would even stand a chance. The ownership limits presumably exist to help prevent a single company from owning every station in every market and locking out any competition.
As it is, many of the large radio conglomerates in existence now (iHeart, Cumulus and Audacy, to name three) have all had fairly severe debt problems, and all three of them have suffered through bankruptcy, so it seems like a business model that doesn't work too well (maybe at one time when radio was more important (pre-Internet, basically), it worked, but not so much anymore). And now they want to merge and get bigger? I really don't think that will work out well.
We live in interesting times, for sure, and I'm not sure I like it much.
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I never expected Manoj to get even a shred of scrutiny prior to the Sports Illustrated debacle. He also purchased NewsNet (a mostly obscure news network) and spent over $20M to assemble a chain of low-power television stations, almost all carrying NewsNet on the primary channel.A 93 year old is not the investor anybody should be worried about. I'm scared of Manoj Bhargava and what he wants to do with Audacy and Cumulus.
I've added additional details based off the post linked above that I've learned over the past few months...
Latest On Audacy’s New Owners And A Potential Cumulus Media Combination
Last night Semafor publicly reported on something that has been whispered for much of the past year; a potential combinationradioinsight.com
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By at least an handful of accounts, Audacy had a potential way to keep the station if it had wanted to pursue it, and it had at least looked into doing so. For whatever reason, it decided not to do that. If a merger with Cumulus is truly in the works, it might've decided keeping a small station in a relatively small market wasn’t the cost or effort. I know GSP is a top-100 market, but the vast majority of radio revenue comes from the top-50. The majority of that comes from the top-20. Markets ranked 50-100 are third tier, and sub 100 markets used to only amount to about 5% of total radio revenue.
Given changes in listening habits and the advertising pool, I’ve come around to the notion that some cap relief, particularly in small markets, is probably necessary to keep radio competitive. I don’t agree with the near total deregulation outside of the top-100 markets that the NAB wants, but allowing some expansion seems reasonable to me. Some stations and operators, however, would likely still fall into an unhappy medium whatever ends up happening.
Based on the BIA Report attached with the sale, Greenville/Spartanburg currently has 43 stations affixed to the market. It needed 45 to be able to keep 106.3 as two have been eliminated since the Entercom/CBS merger. Any attempt to change by getting stations reassigned to the market would've been time consuming and with the FCC's push on not allowing companies to park stations in trusts like Clear Channel did for over a decade, would likely not have been permitted past a year.
The current Congress doesn't matter. Democrats currently control the FCC and they are not the party that would attempt to consolidate the media any further than it already is.
Congress could pass a new set of ownership laws, and the FCC would be required to enforce it. It's not happening anytime soon, though. In addition to a do-nothing congress, I don't think the NAB really wants to go that way either. Too much of a risk of additional baggage, like royalties, getting tacked onto an ownership bill.
I’d have to see a comparison, but it feels like Greenville-Spartanburg is lacking in “typical” commercial FM signals compared to other markets. iHeart has 4 FM’s, Audacy has 4 FM’s, a translator/AM simulcast and another format on 3 translators strung together. Summit has 2 FM’s and 2 translators. There are a few other FM’s like 105.5 and 106.3. So just counting the commercial FM signals, and not the translators, surrounding markets that are ironically much smaller seem to be served by more commercial FM’s. At least 106.3 stayed commercial.
Oddly enough, the dial is essentially full due to the location of the market. Greenville has room for maybe one more LPFM even, if that.
People really don't appreciate how much Sinclair Broadcast Group's infamous "dangerous to our democracy" stunt turned the Democrats against further media consolidation. Divided government of any sort will pretty much make it difficult to do any sort of changes, even it they need to happen... government by paralysis, basically.
But I digress.
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Keep in mind that any action would be taken by the new equity holders, not the people who bankrupted the companies the first time.
Wasn't that how Citadel sold itself to Cumulus after they exited bankruptcy? Or was that a different situation?
Correct but they should know it was excessive debt that led to the bankruptcy actions.
They know. That's how they ended up with the equity. They're the ones who hold that debt.
That was a funny situation. Farid Suleman thought he was going to run the company, and the equity holders sold it out from under him. They wanted the cash, and Dickey was happy to give it to them.
They're trying to find a way to put lipstick on a pig. To make it more valuable than it is, so they can sell it for a profit.
That is a very good point.
I recently rewatched that video, and it was every bit as creepy as it was when it first surfaced in 2018. Maybe worse.
I'm sure this will be laughed to oblivion and back, but what about splitting the big companies into smaller, regional subunits? Kind of like the "baby bells" that resulted from the breakup of the Bell System in the early 80s.
c
Now Inside Radio weighs in on the Semafor article:
www.insideradio.com
The article doesn't really break new ground.
Report: Audacy Investment Part Of A ‘Bigger Audio Buying Spree’ For Soros Fund.
The name of billionaire George Soros has become part of the radio lexicon ever since his Soros Fund Management invested $415 million to become the largest stakeholder in Audacy when
The article doesn't really break new ground.
The article:
While I remember seeing some discussion about this at the time, I don't think I have seen it described from that perspective. So, while it's a bit of a sidebar, it's an interesting update.
Not likely, if ever, to happen. It’s too late to turn the clock back three decades to undo deregulation.
Fair point.
Of course, if we didn't have a broken government, they could undo at least a bit of it, because it seems like when something gets deregulated that was formerly quite regulated, it has a tendency to self destruct (notably exception: the present-day AT&T, which slowly but surely gobbled up many of the former baby bells to reform a network that somewhat resembles the former Ma Bell in size and scope).
c
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