Regulators at America's Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are reviewing the merger on antitrust grounds, with the FCC also assessing its impact on the public interest.
Minow, who takes such a strong stance on good corporate governance that she once advised shareholders to vote against her father, former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow, said that if McDonald's were performing well the poor governance could perhaps be overlooked, but not with a company rapidly losing sales and customers.
His comments have roused the fears of local broadcasters, who have demanded a response from the FCC.
There have even been grumblings from the Ultra Wide Band (UWB) community developers of a new wireless broadband technology who argue that the repeaters could disrupt their own 2.5 gigahertz transmissions.For the time being, the FCC has sided with XM Radio and Sirius.
Andy Levin, a lobbyist for Clear Channel Communications ,America's biggest radio broadcaster, believes the FCC abruptly changed course because of political pressure, as critics of the FCC's deregulatory posture focused their attacks on smearing Clear Channel.
In the meantime, XM and Sirius are going to need all the cash they have got.In 1992, America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earmarked a slab of the country's radio spectrum for something called Digital Audio Radio Service.
It lets broadcasters use their existing part of the spectrum for both digital and analogue transmissions.For that, America's radio broadcasters can thank some extra precautions taken by the FCC.
American Mobile Radio and CD Radio paid the FCC $80m each for the rights to rain digital entertainment from the heavens.
Nowhere are the political risks facing the industry higher than in California, says its boss, James Rogers.A surprise ruling by the FCC in February left Covad, a small, vulnerable provider of broadband services, struggling to understand its likely impact.
In telecoms, where the rules are reviewed every three years, arcane rulings by the FCC can boost or harm even the biggest firms, and create or destroy smaller fry.The controversial nature of these regulatory experiments has attracted a more legitimate sort of interest from politicians but still added to the policy turbulence.
Michael Powell, the FCC's head, may soon suffer the same fate: this week, the House of Representatives voted against a recent FCC relaxation of national ownership limits for broadcast-TV firms.
