When Belo announced it would be splitting into a TV station company (Belo Corp) and a newspaper company, CEO Robert Decherd said this was partly because he was tired of waiting on the FCC to make his job easier:
Belo CEO Robert Decherd, who will head the new newspaper-only company, says that the failure to change FCC cross-ownership rules helped push the company towards this restructuring. His comment serves to reinforce the notion that if cross-ownership rules are relaxed, that relaxation may come too late for newspaper companies, which have long touted the advertising sales and promotional value of having multiple, across-medium properties in the same market.
Now, two months later, the FCC has finally gotten around to helping the poor MSM companies, allowing some cross-ownership of TV stations and newspapers in Top 20 markets, under specific circumstances. Republicans happy, Democrats not so much.
