Scott Fybush is a station broker as the principal of Fybush Media. He is also a consultant, an engineer and has been a close observer of the broadcasting industry for more than 30 years as the editor of NorthEast Radio Watch. His 2025 Tower Site Calendar is now available for pre-order.

It’s rare that the inner regulatory workings of the FCC escape from Washington into the general public’s attention, but these are rare times, and Audacy’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy has become one of those stories that’s taken on political dimensions far beyond the usual obscurity of the Commission’s processes.

The FCC approved the Audacy restructuring deal on Monday, but the approval came on a narrow partisan 3-2 majority, with Republican commissioners Nathan Simington and Brendan Carr dissenting. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel fired back in a statement criticizing Simington and Carr for claiming the plan received preferential treatment, a claim that’s been making the rounds heavily on conservative media in recent weeks.

At the heart of the dispute, of course, is the presence of financier George Soros as one of the funders behind the restructuring. To hear some conservative media outlets tell it, Soros plans to take control of the Audacy stations to push his own political agenda, and while we’re not here to take political sides, the facts are pretty clear: there’s no real evidence that Soros is in this for any reason other than to try to make some money. (It’s worth noting that, if anything, Audacy’s talk stations have been trending to the right lately – KRLD in Dallas, for instance, has been replacing news blocks with more conservative talk.)

What we’re here to do this week (since it’s otherwise a slow news week) is to offer some other observations about some FCC trends that have us raising our eyebrows. Keep reading…

*It’s not just the Audacy restructuring that’s been pulling the FCC’s two Republican commissioners in a more political direction than usual, after all.

Consider two more data points: in a hearing last week, Carr was asked whether he supported the idea that ABC should “lose its licenses” over the way the presidential debate in September was conducted. It’s well-established precedent going back 50 years now that the FCC doesn’t regulate licensees based on the content of their programming, as upheld in no shortage of FCC rejections of attempts to intervene in license renewals based on format changes or news programming.

Did Carr uphold that precedent? He did not. Instead, he suggested that there might indeed be consequences from the debate.

Data point number two: the FCC has been pretty consistent in recent years in its attempt to create real-world consequences for the pirate FM broadcasters who fill up the FM dial in New York, Newark, Miami, Boston and elsewhere, imposing large fines on the broadcasters themselves and, more effectively, on the property owners where the pirates have been operating.

The FCC announced fines last week against three more pirates, hitting Masner Beauplan with $920,000 in penalties for his signals on 91.7 in the Newark area, as well as $40,000 each against Raul Alcantara for 88.9 in the Bronx and Wilner Batiste for 94.1 in Spring Valley, Rockland County.

Those are usually unanimous votes, but not this time: Simington voted against the fines, as part of a larger objection on his part questioning whether the FCC still has the authority to levy fines on its own without a jury trial. Simington’s objections are based on a Supreme Court ruling in June that found that regulatory agencies (in that case, the SEC) can’t impose fines based on their own in-house rulings, but rather that defendants are entitled to a jury trial.

And that, in turn, is part of a larger pattern of Supreme Court rulings, most notably the overturning of the “Chevron doctrine,” that are calling into question a lot of the underpinnings of the regulatory state as we’ve understood it for decades.

*Those are the facts, as we understand them, and now a bit of opinion: no matter what your own political views might be, if you’re in the broadcasting business, it all comes together to create more uncertainty at a time when the industry probably can’t take much more.

There aren’t a lot of potential buyers beating down the doors of big radio companies to pump money into the business right now (just ask Emmis about trying to sell 98.7 in New York), so whether you like George Soros, dislike him or have no opinion at all, is it good for radio if regulatory uncertainty and political scorekeeping are making it harder to get approval for what should still be a value-neutral approval of a fairly standard bankruptcy exit? (As Rosenworcel points out, the basics of the Audacy deal are no different from a half dozen other cases that have received FCC approval in recent years.)

The debate issue should concern broadcasters of all stripes, too. A Commission that’s capable of pushing back on ABC for perceived liberal bias could just as easily shift in the opposite direction, after all, and push back on the many broadcasters whose politics lean right. The FCC’s longstanding policy of not regulating on content and formats has protected all broadcasters over the last half-century. Will broadcasters speak out to protect those hard-fought protections?

We’re watching, too, to see if broadcasters push back at all on Simington on the pirate fines. While the fines still went through on a 4-1 vote (even Carr approved them), a change in political control later this year could shift the balance at the Commission – and will the NAB, which has pushed hard for punitive fines against pirates, be happy if they’re suddenly being let off the hook based on a political philosophical crusade?

The fallout from the Chevron decision is just beginning to be felt across the entire regulatory environment, not just the FCC, and from where we sit here on the edge of the industry, it seems as though there’s potentially much more to be lost than there is to be gained if more pieces of the “administrative state” are dismantled without careful consideration.

While broadcasters have plenty of reasons to be frustrated at the FCC (did you try to get regulatory fees paid last week through the overly-complex CORES system?), those regulations also do a lot to protect broadcasters from interference and to provide the kind of stability that’s needed for a secure, predictable business environment.

It’s a point even the NAB made this week, reacting to the Audacy restucturing approval with a statement praising the importance of regulatory consistency.

“To ensure a vibrant future, we need a transparent, fair and predictable regulatory process for broadcast license transfers and renewals – devoid of politics – that allows local radio and television stations a fair chance to compete for the investment capital that is necessary to continue serving the public,” wrote NAB leader Curtis LeGeyt.