• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 23, 2010

The byzantine world of media regulation just got a little more convoluted with a decision by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals to lift a stay on planned changes in the Federal Communications Commission's rules governing media ownership.

Lifting the stay, which was first imposed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008, means the court can hear various cases challenging the rule change, which aimed to relax rules that previously prevented a single entity from owning multiple media outlets in top media markets. (For example, a media company owning both a newspaper and a broadcast station in a large city.)

The court decision is notable because it disregards a request to keep the stay filed, oddly enough, by the FCC itself. In other words, the FCC was asking the court to continue blocking the FCC's own planned rule change, which in turn prevented the challenges to the rule change from going to trial. No surprise -- the whole confusing mess boils down to politics.

The 2008 decision to loosen rules on cross-ownership of media was made by a Republican-dominated FCC, that is, with Republicans filling three out of five commissioner spots, including ex-chairman Kevin Martin, who pushed for the rule change. Since then, the Democratic sweep of Congress and the White House brought a corresponding change at the FCC, where Democrats now hold three out of five positions.

In May 2009, the Democrat-dominated FCC tried to effectively spike the work of its Republican predecessors by asking the court to keep the stay, renewing this request in October 2009.

However, time has run out on the temporary stay, according to the ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The rule change will take effect -- along with the legal challenges to it brought by advocacy groups like Common Cause and Prometheus Radio Project, which argue that the rules limiting cross-ownership are beneficial to the community.

The controversial rule change was proposed in 2007 following the FCC's last quadrennial review of media ownership rules in 2006. In a final confusing irony, the FCC is preparing for the next quadrennial review this year, meaning that all this legal wrangling could be rendered moot.