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.
Allowing these giants to gain bigger shares of TV markets and acquire local newspapers will reduce the number of independent voices and drown out smaller, homegrown competitors, says Chris Murray, legislative counsel at Consumers Union. "The effect of that is a massive elimination of locally produced and locally relevant news content."
Big newspaper chains like the Tribune Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and 10 other dailies, and Gannett, which owns USA Today and 99 other dailies, also worry the anti-consolidation crowd. If those companies can own TV stations in their markets, they say, consumers will hear the same opinions whether they turn on the local news or flip open the local paper.
Former FCC General Counsel Chris Wright disagrees. "Could local TV news get any worse?" he asks. "I think ownership of TV stations by newspapers could only improve TV news." And Mel Karmazin, president of CBS-owner Viacom, recently told a congressional panel, "It is utterly unsupportable and unrealistic that broadcasters should be handcuffed in their attempts to compete for consumers."
However, foes of media concentration inevitably point to radio as an example of deregulation run amok. "The fear is that if you loosen these rules more, what happened in radio will happen in TV," says Legg Mason regulatory analyst David Kaut. After the FCC raised radio station ownership caps in 1996, Clear Channel Communications, a radio company based in San Antonio, ate up the spectrum, growing from a modest 43 radio stations in 1995 to more than 1,200 today, in 200 markets. The firm also is a big promoter of concerts. That, say critics, has given the radio behemoth the ability to bully artists and homogenize radio content across the nation, so folks in Seattle get exactly the same listening experience as those in Cincinnati.
For some, the implications are even more dire--a threat to free speech it- self. When Cumulus Media, the nation's second-largest radio chain, disapproved of the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines's comments criticizing President Bush and the war in Iraq, the country trio was shut out of its 42 country stations. It's that kind of editorial power that organizations as diverse as the NRA and NOW find anathema and are mobilizing to block.
But the vote and the drama may not end this week. Some critics of the FCC's approach have said they will go to Congress for relief. And there, some legislators are sympathetic. Several senators have promised close scrutiny of any rule changes, and even legislation to reverse the FCC's actions if need be. No matter which TV or radio station or newspaper you turn to for your news, you probably haven't heard the last of this debate.
This story appears in the June 9, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.