Court Opinion

ID: 9480179
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:40:46.215722+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:32.166056
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I completely concur in the majority opinion, but I would like to add a few words to Part Ill’s discussion of the renewal expectancy. It appears to me that virtually all the factors upon which the FCC relies in awarding or renewing broadcast licenses are in a sense fictitious; they are not really predictive of programming substance. Nor is it apparent to me that it is possible to articulate a public interest in any particular kind of programming (such as “nonenter-tainment”). When I sit on these cases, therefore, I feel somewhat like Alice in Wonderland. We have no alternative as a reviewing court, however, but to treat the FCC’s elaboration of the public interest as if it made sense and therefore to insist on a consistent application of what we may really think are fanciful factors.
Quite obviously the FCC shrinks from the prospect of taking the license away from the incumbent, but in the absence of a system whereby a license holder pays the public for the license (as in an auction) it is hard to see how the FCC can justify the weight it places on incumbency in this case. The Commission appears to act as if incumbency and the renewal expectancy were a property interest — which it is not.