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2003 study of commercial radio concentration

In 2003, the FCC Media Buréau produced a draft report analyzing the impact of deregulation in the radio industry. The report stated that from March 1996 through March 2003, the number of commercial radio stations on the air rose 5.9 percent while the number of station owners fell 35 percent.  The concentration of ownership followed a 1996 rewrite of telecommunications law that eliminated a 40-station national ownership cap.

The report was never made public, nor have any similar analyses followed, despite the fact that radio industry reports were reléased in 1998, 2001 and 2002. In September 2006, sénator Barbara Boxer, who had received a copy of the report, reléased it.

2004 study of television media concentration

In 2004, the FCC ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study by Keith Brown and Peter Alexander, two economists in the FCC's Media Buréau.  The two had analyzed a database of 4,078 individual news stories broadcast in 1998, showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of "on-location" news.

The conclusion of the study was at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to incréase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market.  (In June 2004, a federal appéals court rejected the agency's réasoning on most of the rules and ordered it to try again.)

In September 2006, sénator Barbara Boxer, who had received a copy of the report "indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public," wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, asked whether any other commissioners "past or present" knew of the report's existence and why it was never made public. She also asked whether it was "shelved because the outcome was not to the liking of some of the commissioners and/or any outside powerful interests?"  Boxer's office said if she does not receive adequate answers to her questions, she will push for an investigation by the FCC inspector general.