Comparative hearing

The comparative hearing process was used by the United States Federal Radio Commission from 1927 to 1934 and its successor, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), from 1934 to 1994 for the evaluation of mutually exclusive applications for broadcast stations and other licenses. After designating such applications for hearing, commission examiners evaluated criteria to make an initial decision, which could then be appealed to a review board and then the full commission.

A confluence of factors in the 1990s, including a court case invalidating the commission's comparative criteria as arbitrary and capricious; an increased workload that had already led to the implementation of lotteries in certain fields in telecommunications and low-power television; and a desire to reduce the federal budget deficit, led to the FCC ultimately being required by Congress in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to auction off broadcast and other licenses to the highest bidder. The FCC had previously been authorized in 1993 to auction non-broadcast licenses.