IP: Complaint: Clear Channel's "shell game"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 21:58:46 -0500
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
>
> Complaint: Clear Channel's "shell game"
>
> Critics of the radio-industry giant charge that it is skirting
> federal ownership rules with puppet competitors.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Eric Boehlert
>
> Nov. 20, 2001 | Is Clear Channel Communications, the radio behemoth,
> playing a "shell game" with the Federal Communications Commission?
>
> That's the charge an Ohio resident is bringing against the company,
> which, with nearly 1,200 radio stations, is far and away the radio
> industry's most powerful player.
>
> Clear Channel became that big in a frenzy of consolidation in the
> last half of the 1990s, in the wake of the industry's deregulation
> brought about by the watershed 1996 Telecommunications Act. FCC rules
> limit companies from owning too many stations in one broadcast
> market, and the commission approved many of those consolidations on
> the condition that the ever-growing company divest itself of certain
> stations in some cities.
>
> Now, voices are beginning to charge that Clear Channel may have in
> fact retained control of some of those stations -- an unprecedented
> flouting of commission rules.
>
>
> ...
>
> http://www.salon.com/ent/clear_channel/2001/11/20/fcc_complaint/index.html


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