Fewer voices, fewer choices?
Debate rages over an FCC plan to relax ownership rules on big media
What one issue could bring together the National Rifle Association and liberal crusader Ralph Nader?
Strange bedfellows indeed. But they're part of a large, eclectic group--which also improbably includes conservative columnist William Safire and the feminist National Organization for Women--united in opposition to proposed sweeping changes in how the nation's media conglomerates do business. The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote this week to lift a ban on companies or individuals owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. Led by its three Republican members, including Chairman Michael Powell (son of Secretary of State Colin), the commission will also most likely raise the television station ownership cap. That would allow media firms to own outlets that in total can reach 45 percent of the national audience, up from 35 percent now. And the number of TV stations in a single market a company can own may be raised from two to three, though with certain restrictions. "It will lead to more absentee, remote, syndicated, and automated control of local TV stations," warns Nader. Adds the NRA: "The nation's most powerful media companies are trying . . . to gain total control over the news and information that Americans are allowed to read, see, and hear."
The rationale for changing the rules is simple, at least in the minds of proponents: They're obsolete. Some of the rules were adopted decades ago when the viewing choice on TV was between Mr. Ed on CBS and whatever NBC and ABC ran opposite the strangely wise talking horse. These were the days long before the spread of cable TV, not to mention the Internet. The rule makers' original intention was to preserve the number of editorial voices, locally and nationally, to guarantee a wide diversity of opinion.
500 channels. Of course, the media landscape has been turned upside down since then. Coaxial cables pipe hundreds of channels into most Americans' homes, providing a vast spectrum of entertainment choices and editorial viewpoints. Don't like the incessant flag-waving on Fox News? Then flip over to BBC America for a more jaundiced view of American foreign policy. Or turn on the home computer to get the latest news from al Jazeera or the opinions of a thousand individual bloggers.
The changes brought by new technologies, as well as several court challenges to the current rules, prompted Powell to revisit the regulations with the idea that too many media concentrated in too few hands is a bygone concern. In fact, he depicts broadcast TV as endangered. "If you don't do surgery on this patient, it is going to die," Powell says. "Free over-the-air TV is going to die."
But critics point out that if the big media conglomerates, especially the TV networks, were losing influence and power, then their dominance of the advertising dollar would be ebbing. It's not (box, Page 30).
Of special concern to opponents of the new rules are the size and scope of the four big network owners: News Corp., Walt Disney, General Electric, and Viacom, all of which also own cable channels as well as substantial numbers of TV stations. Disney and Viacom have large radio holdings, too, while News Corp. owns the New York Post and is about to acquire DirecTV satellite television.
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