In one example cited to the FCC, Ringer notes that Clear Channel filed an application for a license on behalf of what he calls a shell company. The application is signed by Clear Channel's vice president of engineering, as well as by Troy Langham, who lists his e-mail address as "Troylangham@clearchannel.com." Ringer argues that just days later, "realizing that it had made an error," another copy of the same document was filed with the FCC, but gone are signatures from Clear Channel's vice president, and Langham's e-mail address has been changed to "Troylangham@engineer.com."

Wrote Ringer: "Clear Channel's conduct demonstrated a clear intent to conceal material information from the FCC. In this case, and probably others, Clear Channel provided engineering services for front companies and then attempted to conceal its involvement."

The FCC did recently put Clear Channel on notice in a small way, even though it was unrelated to allegation of warehousing stations. Unable to find a public-interest reason to allow the company's proposed purchase of WUMX in Charlottesville, Va., to go forward, the commission announced the request would be decided during an administrative hearing in front of an FCC judge. It's the first time the commission has ordered a hearing to deal with market-concentration issues in a radio station sale since 1969.

The move "was probably a shot across the bow by the commission, an attempt to reassert their relevancy," says one longtime industry veteran who does business with Clear Channel. "The FCC's tired of being told they're toothless and want to show they're not." (In his New York Times column, conservative William Safire, criticizing the pace of media consolidation, recently mocked chairman Powell as a "roundheeled" pushover who's "steering the [FCC] toward terminal fecklessness.")

Others see the move as too little, too late. "It's so incredibly lame," says Schwartzman at the Media Access Project. "It's easy to pick single worst [application] and say we're going to make an example out of you and get a lot of press saying the FCC is cracking down. But how many hundreds of other transactions [like this] has the FCC approved?"

Last year, for instance, former FCC commissioner Gloria Tristani complained when her fellow commissioners, including chairman Michael Powell, OK'ed a station sale in Binghamton, N.Y. It gave just two radio broadcasters control of 91.2 percent of the market's advertising revenue. "Businesses and listeners will face the increasing likelihood that the two dominant owners will engage in advertising price discrimination and other collusive behavior that contravenes the public interest," wrote Tristani, who labeled the FCC's sale approval "regulatory malfeasance."

Yet suddenly the pending sale in Charlottesville, Va., which would have given two companies 94.2 percent market share, has been flagged for the first FCC hearing of its kind in 33 years.

Clear Channel, it seems, has landed on the Beltway.

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