In response to UCC, FCC to hold "unusual" public hearing on WWOR license renewal
Friday, November 09, 2007
Back in May, the UCC's Office of Communication filed petitions with the FCC asking it to deny News Corp. license renewals of WNYW-TV and WWOR-TV. Now the FCC has scheduled a rare hearing on the license renewal for WWOR. From Broadcasting & Cable:
In an unusual move, the Federal Communications Commission is holding a public forum on whether WWOR-TV should be able to retain its TV-station license.
In a notice late Friday, with all of the commissioners across the country in Seattle for another public hearing on media ownership, the FCC's Media Bureau said it would let the public weigh in and added that it had not yet decided whether the station, owned by News Corp., had "failed to provide a program service and adequately meet the needs of its northern New Jersey viewers."
That was the allegation made by the United Church of Christ and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which also challenged the continuing waiver News Corp. received to operate TV stations and newspapers in the same market. News Corp. eventually got an extension of its two-year waiver, which was required when it bought the Chris-Craft stations, including WWOR-TV.
The FCC forum is scheduled for the evening of Nov. 28 at the Paul Robeson Campus Center on Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd. in Newark, N.J.
