Word: fcc
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...telling moment in an investigation that has largely escaped public notice, unfolding in a bureaucratic arena more typically characterized by paper than passion. But nothing about this investigation is ordinary-not the players, not the stakes, not even the FCC's behavior. One of its own commissioners publicly attacked the probe, branding certain actions "misguided." Even the form of the investigation is unusual, with the commission's lawyers demanding documents from throughout Murdoch's U.S. empire and ordering depositions from Murdoch, former Fox Inc. chairman Barry Diller and a dozen other current and former Fox officials...
...investigation has frozen $1 billion in Fox deals to sell and buy TV stations, all meant to help the upstart network catch up with the Big Three. The probe threatens to kill one of these deals, the $38 million takeover of an nbc affiliate in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The FCC's investigation also forced Murdoch to place into trusteeship two powerful stations he bought under an option included as part of his $500 million investment last year in New World Communications, the deal that won Fox a dozen new affiliates-mostly from CBS -- in some of America's biggest...
Murdoch agreed to sell the Post, which he repurchased in 1993 under an FCC waiver granted to help him rescue the struggling paper, but the second obstacle proved more daunting. Murdoch abandoned his Australian citizenship and with great fanfare became an American. Next he structured the deal so that he, now an American citizen, and Diller would together own 76% of the voting control of the stations. Through a long chain of intermediary companies, Murdoch's Australia-based News Corp. would own the remaining 24% of the voting stock, just under the federal threshold...
...What the FCC apparently did not know, or had failed to understand, was that this 76-to-24 ratio, while it seemed to satisfy federal requirements, said nothing about who actually owned the underlying assets of the stations. In fact, News Corp. indirectly owns more than 99%, a fact Murdoch's lawyers explicitly disclosed only last year, after prodding by the commission. The question then became: Did Murdoch lie, or was the FCC not competent enough to figure...
...deal may not go through, and with its demise the three-decade-old edifice of affirmative action may begin to crumble. Over Frank Washington's protests of unfair treatment, the House voted to repeal the FCC tax provision, and the Senate Finance Committee is poised this week to limit it. But that's just the start. The Republicans do not debate whether affirmative action will be dismantled, only how quickly. And many Democrats accept the inevitable. President Clinton is reviewing all 160 affirmative-action programs, and he is expected to conclude that at least some of them must...