Opinion ID: 442856
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the spectre of unending delay

Text: 77 The FCC's complaint is that granting City of Angels's motion to intervene, and thereby opening up the proceeding to new applicants, will disrupt an otherwise orderly process, delay necessary hearings, and vest RKO with several more years of lucrative ownership of station KHJ. 56 The majority harbors the same fear, asserting that the inevitable result of opening this proceeding to all comers would be yet further delay in determining who should be the licensee of Channel 9 in Los Angeles. 57 78 Unfortunately, the delay feared by the Commission and the majority will occur whether new applicants are permitted to apply for this license or not. In the first place, on remand the Commission must (1) examine RKO's fitness to continue as licensee of channel nine (2) examine Fidelity's basic qualifications, and (3) compare the qualifications of the two prospective licensees. After that arduous task is complete, the Commission--in order to comply with the dictates of the majority--must engage in a wide-ranging expedition to gather information to update the twenty-year-old record. 79 These monumental tasks could take years. In recognition of this fact, the Commission has already entered a two-phase scheduling order 58 under which the second, comparative, phase may not even begin until sometime in 1985. Thus, it is clear that this proceeding will not be over soon, regardless of how we resolve this appeal. In comparison to the resources necessarily committed to resolving the contest between Fidelity and RKO, the additional time consumed by opening up the proceeding to new challengers would probably not be significant. Moreover, the competition of possibly superior candidates for broadcast licenses is worth the small incremental investment that would be occasioned by entertaining their applications. 80 Ultimately, the total time this license proceeding takes is up to the FCC. If the FCC is determined to act with dispatch, it will do so. More likely, given the FCC's past inability to resolve the issues in this case in a timely fashion (nearly prompting a writ of mandamus by this court to force the Commission to issue an opinion), this case will linger on for another two decades, whether additional applicants for this channel are allowed in or not.