The Justice Department told the FCC yesterday it won’t appeal a ruling that continues the ban on companies owning both TV stations and newspapers in the same market. This clouds the future of Media General, which owns both The Tampa Tribune and WFLA Channel 8, and the Tribune Company which has properties in Los Angeles, New York, and Hartford that violate the rules, The New York Times reported.
Stephen Labaton’s NYT piece on the Tampa Tribune‘s web site says Media General has owned the newspaper and TV station since before the 1975 ban on cross-ownership and was allowed by the FCC to keep both.
According to the Tampa Tribune story:
Media General will proceed with its plans to appeal to the Supreme Court, Chief Executive Officer and President J. Stewart Bryan III said Thursday during a previously scheduled conference call with investors.
“We are seeking it largely on First Amendment grounds and on the grounds that nobody at the Supreme Court level has looked at these issues in 25 years,” he said.
In those years, he pointed out, the number of media outlets has grown dramatically with the introduction of cable and satellite TV channels and the Internet.
“Those rules, which we didn’t think were proper in 1975 when they were established, are much more ridiculous today than they were then,” Bryan said.
This material did not appear in the story at www.nytimes.com.