Senate to vote on FCC rollback

TheDeal.com | July 30, 2003 | Jaret Seiberg

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The Senate will vote in early September, when lawmakers return from the summer congressional recess, on whether to repeal a Federal Communications Commission decision to ease restrictions on media company mergers.

Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Trent Lott, R-Miss., said they have 35 co-sponsors for their so-called congressional veto, which would essentially restore the media ownership rules that existed prior to June 2, when the FCC adopted the new regulations.

That is five more votes than needed to force the full Senate to consider the measure. The two lawmakers said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain and ranking member Ernest Hollings have agreed that their panel would bypass the veto so it could proceed straight to the Senate floor.

"This is a bipartisan effort," Dorgan said. "We need to send a message from Congress to the FCC to do it over and do it right."

The senators also said Senate leaders have pledged to hold at least 10 hours of debate on the congressional veto, followed by a vote. Dorgan and Lott said they have at least 51 votes in favor of the measure, though they declined to identify their supporters.

"We believe the votes exist to pass this in the Senate," Dorgan said. "We feel pretty good."

Dorgan said procedural rules bar a filibuster of the veto, which means the lawmakers do not need to worry about securing 60 votes in the Senate required to force a vote.

Lott blamed the FCC for the mounting congressional opposition to its media initiative, asserting that the agency never made a convincing argument in favor of the rule changes. The regulations would generally liberalize limits on owning newspapers, television stations and radio outlets in the same market and expand the percentage of households that a single owner of television stations may serve.

"This issue has support and it is growing support," Lott said, adding that the only reason the vote on veto may not occur in early September is if the FCC delays publishing the final version of the regulations in the Federal Register. Prior to publication, there is technically no rule for Congress to overturn.

Lott cautioned that there is no guarantee that GOP leaders in the House would act on the congressional veto. Yet he also said the repeal effort enjoys such bipartisan support that House leaders may feel compelled to permit a vote.

If the House fails to take action, Lott said senators would seeks to rescind parts of the rule in the appropriations process. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, backs the effort to reinstate many of the pre-June 2 media ownership limits.

Lott also warned President Bush against vetoing an appropriations bill that included provisions repealing the rule rewrite. "I would do everything I could to override a veto," he said.

Despite seeking to overturn the FCC media package, which was championed by FCC chief Michael Powell, neither senator called for the agency chairman to resign. "This is a policy difference," Dorgan said. "We are not talking about wrongdoing."

Powell on Monday, July 28, praised the rule rewrite in a New York Times op-ed column, saying a federal appeals court forced the agency to reevaluate whether the existing ownership limits were legal. The chairman also questioned if opponents of the rules were more interested in ensuring diverse ownership or regulating content. The latter is not permissible, he said.

"When striving to promote the public interest, we must also honor the values of the First Amendment," Powell wrote. "That's why, following the 1996 mandate of Congress, the FCC armed itself with the facts and spent an exhaustive amount of time and resources to strike this constitutionally important balance."

While the senators want to repeal the rules as too lenient, the National Association of Broadcasters is moving to challenge some of the provisions because they do not permit enough consolidation.

NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said Tuesday that the association will file suit with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia contending that media duopoly and radio market rules are unconstitutionally arbitrary and capricious. The duopoly rule permits a company to own multiple television stations in large markets. Wharton said NAB believes that companies should also have that right in smaller markets.

The radio rule would replace the current way of defining markets based on signal strength with one based on geographic markets, which would be defined by an outside ratings agency. Wharton said it is unfair to drastically alter these rules in midstream, comparing it to moving the goal lines in the middle of a game.

The litigation is expected to be filed within the next several weeks.