To curtail the swift consolidation of radio broadcasting since its deregulation in 1996, the commission set new limits on the maximum number of stations one company can own in certain cities and towns.
Even though considerable controversy ensued about the legality of a private channel, in the long run it symbolized the initial step of de facto deregulation of broadcasting in Turkey.
In the early 1990s, the deregulation of television broadcasting brought huge sums of money into sport, and football started to attract the attention of competition authorities and courts over its restrictive business practices.
ITV's new chairman, the former Tory MP Archie Norman, has said he does not "expect favours" from his political contacts, but plans to lobby for more deregulation of the broadcasting market.
And though communication law says that stations must serve "the public interest, convenience and necessity," the meaning of the public interest in broadcasting was so whittled away during Reagan deregulation that stations are free to program whatever kind of news they want: no news, dumb news, left or right wing news, Christian news, Jewish news, all-crime-all-the-time, you name it.
The rise of satellite companies (Sirius and XM) and Web sites such as MySpace, along with the continued effects of F.C.C. deregulation, appear to be threatening the relevance of "local" broadcasting.
Reagan's deregulation of the laws surrounding advertising and children's broadcasting ushered in a glut of commercials-turned-cartoons like Transformers, He-Man, My Little Pony, and GI Joe.
The controversy of the last week comes at a time when Sinclair's stock, like that of other local broadcasting companies, has already been hammered by a sluggish advertising environment and the dashing of deregulation hopes.
