Not Getting on the Policy Agenda: Radio Station Ownership Changes Following the Telecommunications Act of 1996

Abstract

When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 revised the rules on the number of radio stations an owner could hold nationally and in a local market, it unleashed a tidal wave of mergers and acquisitions. Despite the fundamental changes this brought to the structure of the radio industry in the United States, there was a long period before those changes attracted much attention from policy makers. This study uses a model proposed by the political scientist John Kingdon to show why the issue of growing levels of concentration in the radio industry took so long to make it onto the national policy agenda. The application of Kingdon's model reveals that those who had the power to place this issue on the policy agenda were virtually silent until the appointment of William Kennard as FCC Chairman. The paper concludes by using Kingdon's model to account for this lacuna and reviews the model's value to media scholars interested in analyzing the early stages of the policy formation process.