To describe the new law's sweeping implications for radio as "radical" would be an understatement. Prior to this law, tightly regulated broadcasters could own just 40 stations nationally, and only two in a given market. Years earlier, those limits had been relaxed, very cautiously, by the Federal Communications Commission. But suddenly, without the FCC's input or any public hearings, the kind of sweeping deregulation that most broadcasters hadn't even fantasized about two years earlier was ushered in overnight.

"We were watching the vote come down in a hotel room in '95 and we were high-fiving each other," recalls the former head of a major radio group, who requested anonymity. "We knew the multiple-station deals we'd been working on would come to fruition."

Over at Jacor Communications, billionaire investor Sam Zell, who got into the radio business in the early '90s with an eye on the coming consolidation, was pounding on the desk of his CEO, Randy Michaels, telling him to start buying stations immediately.

Michaels did. And so did lots of other deep-pocketed investors. Since the passage of the Telecom Act, 10,000 radio station transactions worth approximately $100 billion have taken place, according to BIA Financial Network. Consequently, there are 1,100 fewer station owners in the business today, down nearly 30 percent since 1996. The largest operator, Clear Channel Communications (whose radio chief is Michaels), owns nearly 1,200 stations. (According to this consolidation chart, Clear Channel today consists of what were once 70 separate broadcast companies.)

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In theory, the Telecom Act was supposed to allow scores of aggressive radio companies to acquire a couple of hundred stations each and cash in on efficiencies of scale. And that did happen within months of the act's signing. But it didn't stop there. Spurred on by a flood of Wall Street investment money, a handful of conglomerates simply kept acquiring until they had essentially carved up the dial.

"Some of the mega-mergers took my breath away," says Susan Ness, who became an FCC commissioner in 1994 and left her post this spring. "You have a situation today where two companies basically control the major markets."

Those two companies -- Clear Channel and Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting -- together control one-third of all radio advertising revenue; in some individual markets their stations command nearly 90 percent of the ad dollars.

Today, radio is a much more lucrative, successful business than it was before the Telecom Act (thanks in part to an unprecedented number of commercials jammed into each hour). So from a purely economic perspective, there has been some benefit from deregulation. Back in 1991, thanks to fragmented ownership and a brutal media recession, 59 percent of all radio stations in America were losing money, according to a National Association of Broadcasters report.

"There wasn't a bank in America that would lend you money to buy a radio station," says longtime radio broker Gary Stevens, who recalls selling a Boston FM around that time for $9 million. The station today would go for at least $90 million.

The accelerated consolidation can be seen as a sign of strength. "As an economist, that signals to me how significant the efficiencies are," says Mark Fratrik, vice president at BIA. "The market tells you a lot of information."

But even in light of the depressed market for radio stations in the early '90s, was the removal of all ownership caps warranted? Surely a more measured raising of caps could have strengthened the economic health of radio without giving control of the entire medium to the highest bidder.

According to critics, local competition has all but vanished from radio in the wake of a consolidation that Congress did not anticipate. That consolidation, in turn, has cleared the way for listless, homogenized and automated programming, along with a near abandonment of local news, all in the name of rampant cost cutting. (One 25-year radio veteran, and current Clear Channel station executive, estimates the Telecom Act has eliminated nearly 10,000 radio-related jobs.) "It's been fabulous for shareholders, but terrible for listeners and employees," says a former broadcast group chief. "I wanted to see radio deregulation. But I think Telecom has done a disservice to what was once a great business."

"The unintended consequences [of the act] have changed irrecoverably the face of radio," says Ness, the former FCC commissioner.

The irony is that even though radio deregulation was an "afterthought" in the Telecom Act, as Stevens puts it, no other communications industry has been so dramatically affected by the legislation. And far from being viewed as a mistake by the leaders of other communications industries, it is seen as a role model.

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