Cross-Ownership Deregulation

[willdav713]

Do you want me to begin to list the number of cable companies in this country? The thousands of independent radio owners?  Yet you want to force them to operate with dated ownership laws that aren't forced on other similar industries?

Let's see you have TV via Cell Phone now, so there is Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, Cricket along with the other Pay TV services such as Time Warner, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Dish, Grande, DirectTV.

And with VOIP you can hook it up to Clear which is 3G internet, also you can do the same thing with T-Mobile.

There's competition in the Cable and Telco industry, they just use different methods of retrieving said signal.

I'm sorry I do not want the Express News to own Comcast, or vise versa.  Such a move would allow such.

[TheBigA]

I'm sorry I do not want the Express News to own Comcast, or vise versa.  Such a move would allow such.

It's not the kind of thing that's decided by popular vote.  If the Commission decides to change the rule, and the Congress doesn't oppose, the rule gets changed. 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

So tell me BigA...  make a prediction...  an observation for me.

The original change that allowed the "consolidation" move drove station selling prices up as the consolidators went hunting for game.

The number of transactions that could open up with the "Cross-Ownership Deregulation" change has to be very few in number, but it could have some affect on station prices for awhile.

It could cause owners in the metro markets affected to think it is a sellers market so they will try demanding higher prices than has been the trend lately.   Or,  a lot of owners with the second or third best frequencies in town might decide this is the best chance in my life-time to unload my turkey...  If will cut the price a bit,  take the money, and run.

My guess is very wish-washy.  There will be some of each.  Why would an owner fill up their limits/quota of stations allowed with 2nd or 3rd rate dogs so some will pay the premium price for the best dial location. 

Others "ain't that smart".

[TheBigA]

The number of transactions that could open up with the "Cross-Ownership Deregulation" change has to be very few in number, but it could have some affect on station prices for awhile.

I don't know.  The main thing that we know is that the newspaper business is dying.  Companies that only own newspapers are seeing declining subscriptions and ad revenues.  But the newsgathering process they do is very valuable and is very useful for radio, TV, and internet.  So the goal regulators have is to keep newspapers alive by allowing them to also own broadcasting.  It's similar to the laws that allowed stations to own more FMs, but they also had to own some AMs.  In major markets like NY, Chicago, LA, and Dallas, you already have cross-ownership with waivers.  All this would do is eliminate the need for waivers.  There are also small markets like Gettysburg PA and Fredericksburg VA where newspapers own radio with waivers.  In every case, the cross-ownership has meant local owners with a lot of community interest. 

It could lead to some short term price increases, but the requirement and cost of owning a declining medium like newspaper might be too much of a stipulation for a lot of technology oriented companies. I don't see companies like Comcast, Time-Warner, or Disney buying radio stations and newspapers together. The newspaper aspect is too far outside their current business.  But I do see the Washington Post or other major dailies getting back into the local broadcasting business as a way to spread out the cost of gathering news.

[TexasTom]

There's not a lot of competition.

The thread is about newspaper-radio crossownership.   There's lots of competition.

That being the case, why did you originally post all the names of those cable and telecom companies?

[TheBigA]

That being the case, why did you originally post all the names of those cable and telecom companies?

If you go through the thread you'll see that willdav713 is who posted all those cable and telecom companies, not me.