Its drafters argued that this would allow the survival of multiple daily newspapers in a given urban market where circulation was declining.
This exemption stemmed from the observation that the alternative is usually for at least one of the newspapers, generally the one published in the evening, to cease operations altogether.
Arrangements similar to this allowed most medium-sized United States cities to have two daily newspapers until fairly recently.
[3] In fact, President Richard M. Nixon initially opposed the passage of the act (as had his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson) as being antithetical to the essential practices and character of free market capitalism.
[4] In the 1969 letter, Berlin intimated that failure of the law to pass would carry political consequences and hinted that support from Nixon would conversely help the President and his allies.