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Published on: 7/15/2001
Last Visited: 3/18/2002
And, as longtime media analyst Tom Wolzien of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. said, "things have a tendency to happen once they're allowed."
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a decision handed down Tuesday (February 19, 2002), threw out long-standing rules that forbid one company from owning cable TV systems and a broadcast TV station in the same market.
The ruling in the suit, which was brought by a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner Inc., would allow cable operators to own broadcast networks, allowing potentially huge combinations such as AOL and NBC or Comcast Corp. and Walt Disney Co.
The court also ordered the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider a rule that forbids a single company from owning stations that reach more than 35 percent of the national audience.