FCC Wades Into Media Ownership

Academics took aim at the media ownership review process Monday in the first of three workshops at the Federal Communications Commission this week as the agency begins its congressionally mandated quadrennial review of media-ownership rules. Advice ran the gamut from suggesting that, beyond the current antitrust laws, the government had no business regulating the ownership of media outlets -- former Republican Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth -- to suggestions that the FCC might be able to regulate the media virtually at will if it could be justified as advancing the democratic role of the media. Media Bureau chief Bill Lake said the goal of all the workshops was not necessarily figuring out not so much "where we should go out as much as where we go in." Furchtgott-Roth said those not convinced of the dire straits of those TV and newspapers should visit them, but quickly, before they went out of business. He said virtually all newspapers were either shuttered, in bankruptcy, or in trouble, and that the TV station business was not much better. He said they were the victims of competition, not the absence of it. Economists and academics assembled for the panel talked about the need for more and better research, and at least one made a point about improvements the FCC needed to make to its databases so better information could be distracted. There was no consensus, but none could have been expected from the variety of views assembled. Those favoring some regulatory governor on the market tended to argue that the Internet was not necessarily a substitutable competitor. Steve Wildman, from the Quello Center For Communications Management at Michigan State, came armed with data from a study he and colleagues are conducting in association with the National Science Foundation. The bad news for broadcasters was that according to his analysis of 120 markets, in most of those, most stations weren't doing news period, and those that did weren't necessarily covering local issues. For example, he said, in Chicago only five of 15 stations were doing news. The good news was that where they were doing news, local TV and newspapers dominated in terms of local news items, far outstripping the "citizen journalist" category, cable and others.