Billionaire activist George Soros has reportedly been approved to purchase Audacy, the second-largest chain of radio stations in the U.S, owning 220 American radio stations in 40 markets and reaching 165 million listeners monthly.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—the U.S. agency responsible for regulating communications via radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable—last week approved the purchase with the three Democrats on the commission outvoting the two Republicans, according to the New York Post.
A spokesman for the FCC told Fox News Digital that “no decision is final until the Commission releases it, which we have not.”
In February, Soros, the 93-year-old left-wing globalist, bought $400 million of debt in Audacy after the company declared bankruptcy, making him its largest shareholder. The company has since restructured and is currently home to conservative voices like Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Glenn Beck.
A source told the New York Post,
The idea that George Soros is buying hundreds of local radio stations right before a national election and will keep broadcasting Sean Hannity and other conservative talk radio hosts on Audacy is not credible.
Texas Congressman Chip Roy, a Republican, raised serious concerns about the Audacy purchase in April, pointing out that the Soros group had asked the FCC to waive the normal process where the agency reviews and assesses foreign ownership interests, putting it off until “sometime down the road.”
Under the federal Communications Act, no radio station license can be held by a corporation with more than 25% foreign ownership. The Soros group acknowledged that the level of foreign ownership of Audacy will exceed that, and still requested that the FCC expedite the approval of the application for ownership to “allow them to more quickly realize their ownership interests in, and take the reins at, these hundreds of local radio stations across the country,” Congressman Roy said in a letter to the FCC, adding:
The FCC has an obligation to complete a full and thorough review of any radio station purchase of this size and magnitude.
“The FCC should not create a special Soros shortcut,” Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told The New York Post in June.
The Soros group has a history of scooping up conservative media companies and changing their leadership and programming. Soros purchased a media company in Poland before last fall’s election that unseated the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.
