Leftist billionaire and Democratic mega-donor George Soros has been leaning on the Democrat-controlled Federal Communications Commission for months in hopes of fast-tracking his group’s acquisition of over 200 radio stations in over 40 markets — including stations that run shows from Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Erick Erickson, Sean Hannity, and Dana Loesch.
On Wednesday, the FCC
reportedly adopted an order to approve the purchase, meaning that in a matter of days, Soros will likely take control of communications to over 165 million Americans with the help of unvetted foreign investors whom Democrats have spared from the FCC’s customary national security review process.
National syndicated radio host and Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck asked Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr Tuesday about the Democratic FCC commissioners’ apparent willingness to cosign Soros’ latest play for narrative dominance.
Carr made clear that “it’s an unprecedented decision for the commission” that would not have alternatively been accepted were Soros a partisan of another stripe — a decision that comes amid a broader “weaponization of government power … against free speech.”
Background
Audacy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas on Jan. 7 to reduce its debt.
Months later, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas
approved the company’s reorganization plan, paving the way for an equitization of over 80% of the company’s debt.
In February, Soros Fund Management acquired roughly $414 million of Audacy’s debt — nearly 40% of the company’s senior debt — emerging as the company’s primary shareholder.
‘Soros took foreign investment to make his bid.’
Audacy asked the FCC to approve the transfer of its broadcast licenses to the reorganized company.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and other critics
noted, however, that such a transfer would be problematic as the reorganized company would exceed legally acceptable foreign ownership limits. Section 310(b)(4) of the Communications Act prohibits foreign owners from having a stake in a radio station license exceeding 25%.
Media Research Center noted in its April
petition to deny the “special Soros shortcut” that “the Soros group expressly states in their FCC filing that they have determined that the aggregate level of foreign ownership in the company when it emerges from bankruptcy will exceed the 25 percent limit specified in Section 310(b)(4) of the Communications Act due to the various entities that it expects to hold voting or equity interests.”
Audacy requested that the five-member FCC, which has a Democratic majority, take the unprecedented step of not only waiving the foreign ownership restriction in order to allow the purchase to move forward but of putting off a national security review of the stations’ foreign-interest holders.
Democrat-anointed foreign takeover
Following a
New York Post report stating that the three Democrats on the FCC voted Wednesday to approve Audacy’s reorganization plan, Commissioner Carr spoke to Glenn Beck about what happens next.
“Now, the vote came down in the FCC. It was partisan. Three Democrats voting for it. Two Republicans voting against it,” said Beck. “But here’s the real problem: According to existing FCC rules, foreign company ownership of U.S. radio stations is not supposed to exceed 25%. But Soros took foreign investment to make his bid, and then he asked the FCC to make an exception to the usual review process.”
Carr said, “I’ve been very outspoken on this particular issue for the reasons that you talked about. We have a very clear process at the FCC that we set up — it could take six months, it could take a year — to go through to [the national security] review the foreign ownership at issue here. But for reasons that are not sort of plain to me, the FCC … for the very first time ever, has skipped that process for the benefit of this Soros-backed group.”
“It’s an unprecedented decision for the commission,” added Carr.
When Blaze News asked how the Soros group dodged the Communications Act prohibition, Carr said:
What happened here was that the Soros group came in and said, ‘Look, approve our takeover of these stations now. We will wall off the foreign interest holders from any sort of significant, relevant decision-making authority for the time being, then we’ll come back to you down the road and file the petition and go through the petition process.’
Apparently, that was good enough for the Democratic commissioners.
“Usually, you don’t let the people get the licenses first until we go through the foreign ownership. I would imagine that they’re going to have to come back to the FCC and run this foreign ownership process,” continued Carr. “And if that does uncover — and I’m not saying it’s likely — but if that does uncover some untoward level of foreign influence, then the FCC should have the full tools available to it to take action.”
‘This is sort of the reverse side of a pattern that we’ve been living under the last couple of years.’
While remedies might be as simple as further walling off of investors or selling off an interest, Carr indicated that the FCC could “go so far as to reconsider the grant of a license,” although he does not anticipate revocation being necessary.
Rules for thee
Carr alluded to what the implications of this decision might be, noting that the affected radio stations are not just playing classic rock but in a number of cases have conservative talk shows and news.
When Beck suggested the reverse wouldn’t fly, Carr indicated that conservative buyers were shut down in the past when trying something similar.
“Not too long ago — a year ago — there was a group of conservative buyers that wanted to purchase some South Florida radio station,” said Carr. “And a number of Democrats spoke up very loudly and said the FCC cannot allow these conservative outlets to buy these radio stations because, in the Democrats’ view, it can cost them an election in South Florida.”
Carr contextualized this hypocrisy in a broader trend of Democrats seeking to “weaponize the government to go against conservative speech.”
“This is sort of the reverse side of a pattern that we’ve been living under the last couple of years — of weaponization of government power, in my view, frankly, against free speech.”
When asked whether there has been any pushback on the Soros takeover from Democrats, Carr laughed, telling Blaze News the only lawmakers who came to mind in terms of raising alarm were Cruz, Roy, and Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.).
Motive
Beck asked Carr why Soros might want to invest this kind of money in what appears to be a “dying medium.”
‘Maybe there’s a business case there that they’re smart enough to see, that everyone doesn’t see.’
“It’s a good question,” said Carr. “I don’t know a lot of billionaires right now that, with all the options for where they’re going to place their money, sit around saying, ‘You know what really kicks off a lot of cash right now are local radio stations.’ Maybe.”
“We’re seeing a flight of capital from local broadcasting because it’s so challenged right now with competition from social media companies and over-the-top providers,” continued Carr. “So maybe there’s a business case there that they’re smart enough to see that everyone doesn’t see.”
NPR president Katherine Maher, a censorious alumna of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader program who previously worked at the National Democratic Institute, which is primarily funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations,
provided a possible clue as to why her fellow travelers might want to take control of American radio stations.
Maher, who toured the ground zeroes of various regime changes in recent years as they were unfolding, penned a December 2010 NDI
blog post, titled, “Can a Radio Station Govern a Country?”
The article concerned an electoral crisis in the Ivory Coast that led to civil war and the desire by one faction to seize control of the state broadcaster, Radiodiffusion Television Ivoirienne.
Maher quoted her friend who suggested:
Control over RTI has become a flashpoint in the crisis precisely because information is both severely limited and crucial to building legitimacy, however tenuous, with the public. In the absence of a robust private media to report on the election controversy, the state-run broadcaster may effectively have as much power to declare the ultimate winner as the electoral commission formally tasked with doing so.
Maher concluded, “Control over the flow of information in a closed society can be tantamount to control over the state.”
Carr told Beck that after the FCC releases its final decision, Soros’ control over hundreds of American radio stations will be “instantaneous.”
Rikki Ratliff-Fellman, director of programming at Blaze Media,
suggested on X, “The Harris-Biden admin doesn’t actually care about ‘foreign malign influence’ in our elections. If they did they would object to Soros’ takeover of the 2nd largest chain of U.S. radio stations made possible by foreign investment and Democrat blessing.”
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