On September 12, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking as part of its biennial review of media ownership rules mandated under the 1996 Telecommunications Act to determine whether the marketplace is sufficiently ensuring the goals of local responsiveness, diversity, and competition with respect to local media, or if existing rules need to be maintained or modified, in order to promote these goals. The NPRM is significant because it involves the wholesale review of all major applicable rules involving broadcast media ownership, coinciding with the study of those rules by a special FCC Media Ownership Working Group. Comments will be due 60 days after the studies are completed and released to the public. Established as a referee to allocate specific portions of the spectrum for current and future applications and services in a manner as efficient and non-disruptive a manner as possible, the FCC is to use a balance as a guiding principle in its deliberations between promoting growth and competition while acting as a steward for the public interest, making sure that services address a variety of perspectives, public affairs needs, and local and community obligations in return for use of the public communications spectrum. Because of the chaos that might occur in an unregulated medium, the FCC grants a limited number of players exclusive rights to provide content, in exchange for promises to operate under rules that allow other independent operators to exist and provide a wide range of other perspectives and voices. Americans, for the most part, have numerous options for news and entertainment sources, as well as the means through which it is received, but have also expressed longstanding concern regarding increased control of media content and distribution by an increasingly select number of firms. Owners of different media have, therefore, always been treated, according to different ownership standards under FCC rules. Technological innovation, marketplace realities, and legal and policy decisions have made it difficult to rely upon past rules for guidance on what is permissible. The rise, fall, consolidation, and partnerships among publishing, radio and television broadcasters, cable, telecommunications (including wireless and satellite), and Internet-based entities have served to perpetually reshape the media marketplace since both the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the establishment of the FCC itself in 1934. FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin, in a separate comment issued the same day as the NPRM, stated that newspapers, for example, have been held to the same set of media ownership rules being addressed under the NPRM since their adoption in 1970. But as Commissioner Martin noted, the FCC has also, in recent years, moved to relax the decades-old limits on TV/radio cross-ownership and local television duopolies (which permits one entity to own two stations in the same market as long as one of the two stations is not one of the top four stations, and at least eight independently owned and operated broadcast television stations remain viable); caps on national and local radio station ownership; and bans on cable/network television cross-ownership, and dual networks (which prohibits one entity from owning two networks). The courts have also moved in the direction of supporting challenges to FCC rules on ownership limits. On February 19, 2002, the U.S. District Appeals Court (DC Circuit), In the case of Fox Television Stations v. FCC, blasted the federal rules capping ownership of multiple television stations by a national entity at no more than a combined 35% of the national viewing audience, as well as the television duopoly rule, ordering the FCC to review the former. The FCC had waived the ownership cap for Fox Television in 2001 in its pursuit of Chris-Craft Industries, and Viacom in its 2000 merger with CBS Broadcasting, creating audiences 40% and 41% respectively. The cap was then reapplied to Viacom with a deadline of 12 months to meet its obligations, and the same limitation hampered the Fox purchase. The multiple station limit was originally implemented in 1941 to prevent one broadcasting entity from owning more than three stations nationally, to a more complicated arrangement by the mid-1980s setting a limit of both a combined 25 percent of the national audience and a limit of 12 television TV stations per owner. Congress blocked an FCC attempt to scrap the rule in 1984, amending it through the 1996 Telecommunications Act by dropping the 12-station limit, and expanding the total national audience reach at 35%. In the same ruling, the court vacated a cable-broadcast ownership rule in a matter involving Time Warner Entertainment. The rule had prevented cable television systems from carrying a broadcast station signal if there was cable-owned station in the same market, in an attempt to prevent cable systems from showing bias against signals from other broadcast stations. It also had the effect, however, of blocking cable systems from purchasing or consolidating their communications in desired markets where they already had operations. Time Warner Entertainment had argued that the rule was both "arbitrary and capricious" and a violation of First Amendment freedom of speech guarantees. The court agreed as to the arbitrary and capricious nature of the FCC's rule, but not on the First Amendment violation claims, instead finding that the FCC could reintroduce rulemaking in this area if it could find more solid ground for doing so. The resulting set of rules governing media ownership have undoubtedly benefited a number of players during market shakeouts and economic downturns, and increased their size and scope of media offerings to a large degree, but possibly at the expense of other small firms. Such developments cannot be viewed exclusively under a strictly "marketplace versus public policy" framework, given the increasingly complex set of partnership arrangements and ventures across different forms of communications present and in development. That the NPRM coincides with the wholesale simultaneous review of no less than ten major media ownership rules should demonstrate the importance and priority the FCC is giving the matter. But that the NPRM was issued before the empirical study is even complete (though it will be made available to the public for review during the comment period), suggests that certain key policy deliberations, such as permanent removal of ownership caps, are done deals in the face of market realities of convergence and consolidation before the public has its say. The dangers of an overly consolidated media and information landscape, where disparate levels of competition exist among broadcasters, cable systems, and telecommunications firms at the local to national level can only be proved through studies that justify regulations which have prevented the harms in the first place. The potential removal of those rules without substantive analysis that takes into account the spirit under which they were enacted, in addition to broader public, consumer, industry, and public interest realities only makes it more likely that potential concerns become reality, and that future regulatory action will be needed.