6 Radio Group Owners Seek to Intervene to Defeat FCC’s Quadrennial Review Order

Six radio broadcasters seek leave to intervene in support of the four petitions for review consolidated in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that challenge the FCC’s Dec. 26 quadrennial review order for allegedly violating Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act (see 2403050075), said their unopposed joint motion Monday. The consolidated petitions pending in the 8th Circuit are from Zimmer Radio (docket 24-1380), Beasley Media Group (docket 24-1480), NAB (docket 24-1493) and Nexstar Media Group (docket 24-1516). The radio broadcasters seeking to intervene in support of those petitions are Connoisseur Media, Mid-West Management, Midwest Communications, Sun Valley Radio, Eagle Communications and Legend Communications of Wyoming. The radio broadcasters, owners and licensees collectively of nearly 200 stations across the U.S., would see their interests “adversely affected” by the implementation of the FCC’s order, said their motion to intervene. It would harm them “by arbitrarily restricting their ability to compete in their markets against larger, less regulated digital content providers and advertising platforms,” they said. The platforms, including those owned by some of the largest U.S. companies, have been “siphoning away” listeners and advertising revenue from traditional radio, it said. The ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates associations sought leave Friday to intervene in support of the four petitions, arguing that the FCC’s order “refused to loosen” the commission’s “decades-old regulation of local television ownership to reflect today’s increasingly competitive media landscape (see 2403220041). NCTA on Monday came to the defense of the order, arguing that it rightfully retained the commission's local television ownership rule, which generally limits the number of full-power television stations an entity may own within the same local market (see 2403250064).