FCC: Not Cool

I'm pissed.

As if this country needed a further degradation of the quality of mainstream media outlets, today the FCC voted to relax the rules governing ownership of outlets in the same market. Under the new rule, a corporation could own a newspaper and either a TV or a radio station in the same market, with a few conditions - the station can't be among the top four in that market, there have to be at least eight other independently owned-and-operated outlets left over and the new allowance would only apply in the nation's 20 largest markets.

For 2007-08, Nielsen Media Research ranked the top media markets in the U.S. See the full list here. (Sorry for the Wikipedianess, but Nielsen's Web site is a bear to navigate...) Charlotte is #25, Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville (WTF?) is #28 and the Triad is #46.

By the way, the vote was 3-2. The two Republican committee members and Republican chair voted to undo the 32-year old ban on multiple-outlet ownership, and the two Democrat members voted against the relaxed rules.

I guess that's why I'm pissed. Today's vote was nothing but an obviously partisan sop to the handful of corporations that can afford to buy more than one outlet in a market large enough to be eligible under the new rule. It's not going to dramatically affect who owns the newspaper and one TV station in my hometown (yet). But unfortunately my local paper and TV news stations get the lion's share of their national and international content from, you guessed it - media outlets in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and the other Top 20 markets targeted by the FCC.

And here I thought "media partnerships" (everything from story-sharing to outright event sponsorship) were a bad idea...now my local media outlets - alreadly understaffed and underfunded - will have even less variety in perspectives to choose from in filling their broadcasts or pages.

A monopoly of media is just as dangerous as a monopoly of any other service - in fact, even more dangerous because if you (say, Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner) control the flow of information, you control your opposition. You control the world. Not to mention the standard monopolies-are-bad argument that competition increases quality. And if there's one thing our MSM could use a little more of, it's quality.

Which is why I'm mildly amused, if not totally surprised, that it was the Republican FCC representatives who voted to change the very rule that promoted healthy competition in the media industry. (Unhealthy competition, too, to be fair - would we have 24-hour news and screaming heads if outlets didn't have to fight for viewers?) It's funny how so many Republicans are all down on welfare and socialist protectionism until they're the ones who need protecting. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I thought you boys were capitalists...?

On the plus side, four Republican Senators joined with 21 others on a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on Monday, warning that if the ban were overturned they would take legislative action. Now that the ban has in fact been stripped, we'll see.

By the way, the White House is reportedly completely behind the FCC on this one. Of course. In a totally unrelated story, USA Today reported in 2004 that executives from media outlet-hoover Clear Channel weren't at all shy about their apparent support of President Bush in that year's election. Nope, no connection there whatsoever.

It's a good thing we have so many disparate perspectives among our major media markets, so all the subtleties, like details of various parties' motivations, don't get lost in the shuffle...Oh, wait.


[One more thing...this may be my favorite part of the story. In defending the FCC's move, Commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez said that the FCC has "crafted changes that appropriately take into account the myriad of news and information outlets that exist today."

So, what's scarier? The spectre of all of the nation's news feeding out from a handful of corporate sources, or a Cabinet-level official who doesn't know the correct usage of "myriad"?]