On the morning of a very controversial Open Meeting at the FCC, three items were deleted from the agenda. But the deleted items were not the ones at the source of the controversy.
The Commission removed items concerning competitive market conditions for commercial mobile services, an NPRM addressing sponsorship identification rules and embedded advertising, and an item considering two NPRMs addressing satellite digital audio radio service (SDARS) and Wireless Communications Service licenses. The latter was adopted by the Commission prior to the Meeting.
What remained ominously on the agenda, however, were the items concerning media ownership and localism which have generated a considerable amount of heat within the media industry and on Capitol Hill. As detailed in blog postings on Dec. 18 and Dec. 13, Chairman Kevin Martin has been under fire for failing to afford the public a sufficient amount of time to comment on the proposed media ownership rule he introduced in a press release on November 13.
Click here to to read the Commission’s release on the deletion of the agenda items