No Sale, Part II

摘要

Blame the hazy state of the government's broadcast ownership rules for the miasma hanging over the market for TV-station deals. The clouds won't be lifted for the foreseeable future either. Media conglomerates looking to grow national and local footprints, small group owners hoping to cash out, and investment bankers eager for commissions all predicted a wild market for station transactions following the FCC's 2003 deregulation of broadcast-ownership rules. But the expected rush of transactions was smothered at birth by legal challenges that ultimately resulted in federal appeals judges' throwing out deregulation that would have permitted the biggest station groups to get bigger and would have opened the door to many more ownership combinations of local TV, radio and newspaper groups.