*Pages 1--1 from Microsoft Word - 44413.doc* Federal Communications Commission FCC 04- 232 DISSENTING STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONERS MICHAEL J. COPPS AND JONATHAN S. ADELSTEIN Re: Michael Radio Group, Assignor and Clear Channel Broadcasting Licenses, Inc., Assignee For Assignment of Construction Permit of Station KDAM( FM), Hope, North Dakota In this case, the majority approves Clear Channel’s acquisition of a radio station in a market in which Clear Channel already controls over 50 percent of the market and Clear Channel and the next largest owner together control over 90 percent. Given this extreme level of market concentration, we cannot support grant of this transfer absent additional information on the public interest benefits of the transaction. Yet, here, the majority has not even considered the public interest benefits or harms. We are troubled by the trend toward greater and greater consolidation of the media, particularly in smaller radio markets, and this Commission’s acceptance of such levels of concentration with hardly any analysis. For a robust marketplace of ideas to survive, every community deserves to have a diversity of sources of information available to its members - not just those who live in the largest cities. We find that the amount of concentration at issue here is potentially very harmful to competition, to the listening public and to America's deeply held values of localism and diversity. 1