Ten Years Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act (Telecommunications Act of 1996: Ten Years Later Symposium‪)‬

Approximately every two years, on average, Congress makes significant changes in the nation's rule of law governing the communications and media industries. Sometimes the changes express direct commands, but more often than not, the new laws express intent to achieve a general goal through specific regulation. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 ("1996 Act") contained, for instance, the direct command, in effect, to allow rapid and major consolidation of the radio industry. Even direct commands do not necessarily produce the outcomes sought. A few companies did consolidate the terrestrial radio industry under a few roofs. That consolidation did substantially limit the possibility of a liberal radio network and might have been intended for this purpose by Congress. However, the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") quite consciously offset the congressional desire to cement a conservative point of view in radio by creating two national satellite radio firms that each would have enough channel capacity to carry diverse viewpoints for purely economic reasons. And so it came to pass that eventually Karmazin took his managerial genius to the very high tower called a satellite, and Stern inevitably followed.