NAB Wants to Weigh In on Ownership Court Challenges

The National Association of Broadcasters has asked a D.C. federal court to let it weigh in on the Prometheus Radio Project challenge to the FCC's quadrennial media ownership review.

NAB Friday withdrew its court challenge to the decision—as insufficiently deregulatory—now that it has decided to instead petition the FCC—soon to be in Republican majority control—to reconsider the decision (NAB can appeal to both the court and the FCC at the same time).

But Prometheus has challenged the decision as insufficiently regulatory, so NAB wants to be able to weigh in in opposition to that view, as well as in other challenges to the decision.

NAB says if the court were to invalidate the FCC decision on the grounds that it did not go far enough, the result could be "even more restrictive broadcast ownership rules and further regulation of shared service arrangements and other aspects of the broadcast industry," it said in its motion to intervene in the case, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. "Invalidation of the Order on these bases would separately and independently harm NAB and its members."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.