broadcasters, ABC and NBC, wanted to establish high fees for broadcasting licenses, but Congress saw this as a limitation upon free speech. Consequently, "the franchise to operate a broadcasting station, often worth millions, is awarded free of charge to enterprises selected under the standard of 'public interest, convenience, or necessity.'" Nevertheless, radio and television was dominated by the Big Three television networks until the mid-1990s, when the Fox network and UPN and The WB started to challenge that hegemony. Cross-ownership rules of 1975 In 1975, the FCC passed the newspaper and broadcast cross-ownership rule. This ban prohibited the ownership of a daily newspaper and any "full-power broadcast station that serviced the same community". This rule emphasized the need to ensure that a broad number of voices were given the opportunity to communicate via different outlets in each market. Newspapers, explicitly prohibited from federal regulation because of the guarantee of freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, were out of the FCC's jurisdiction, but the FCC could use the ownership of a newspaper as a preclusion against owning radio or television licenses, which the FCC could and did regulate. The FCC designed rules to make sure that there is a diversity of voices and opinions on the airwaves. "Beginning in 1975, FCC rules banned cross-ownership by a single entity of a daily newspaper and television or radio broadcast station operating in the same local market." The ruling was put in place to limit media concentration in TV and radio markets, because they use public airwaves, which is a valuable, and now limited, resource. Telecommunications Act 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was an influential act for media cross-ownership. One of the requirements of the act was that the FCC must conduct a biennial review of its media ownership rules "and shall determine whether any of such rules are necessary in the public interest as the result of competition." The Commission was ordered to "repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer in the public interest." The legislation, touted as a step that would foster competition, actually resulted in the subsequent mergers of several large companies, a trend which still continues. Over 4,000 radio stations were bought out, and minority ownership of TV stations dropped to its lowest point since the federal government began tracking such data in 1990. Since the Telecommunications Act