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[Commentary] As Americans across the nation were celebrating the holidays, a federal agency was tying a bow on a gift for big media conglomerates. To avoid public scrutiny, the Federal Communications Commission used the holiday lull to propose rule changes that would allow greater media consolidation in big cities. A vote by the FCC could come any day now.

The rule would make a bad situation worse. In 1983, 90 percent of the American media was owned by 50 companies. Today, 90 percent is controlled by just six corporations: General Electric, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. Now the FCC is proposing more consolidation. The proposed new rules would let one corporation in the top 20 media markets own a major newspaper, two television stations, and up to eight radio stations, and provide Internet service. More media consolidation, or what the FCC calls cross-ownership, would result in less local control, fewer outlets offering differing viewpoints, and less ownership diversity.

Two months ago, AT&T petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to plan for the retirement of traditional phone networks and transition to what AT&T sees as an inevitability: the all-Internet protocol telco.

AT&T had been discussing the transition internally, spurred on by the FCC's own suggestion that the Public Switched Telephone Network might be ripe for death somewhere around 2018. "This telephone network we've grown up with is now an obsolete platform, or at least a rapidly obsolescing platform," said Hank Hultquist, VP of AT&T's federal regulatory division. "It will not be sustainable for the indefinite future. Nobody's making this network technology anymore. It's become more and more difficult to find spare parts for it. And it's becoming more and more difficult to find trained technicians and engineers to work on it." Although going all-IP signals the death of traditional telephone networks, Hultquist believes Internet Protocol-based networks will give voice calls a higher quality and greater importance. He looks forward to the integration of voice throughout the Web, something that is already happening with the likes of Skype on Facebook and Google Hangouts. When everything is IP, the telecom industries and IT industries will basically become one and the same, said Daniel Berninger, founder of a startup called VCXC (the Voice Communication Exchange Committee) devoted to speeding the transition to all-IP networks. It'll be important to make the transition while preserving what's good about traditional phone networks, such as reliability and 911 services, he noted. In doing so, companies like AT&T will shed lots of complexity and potentially save a ton of money. AT&T's network services and content delivery would all be delivered using the same technology.

Verizon Communications Chief Executive Lowell McAdam believes the company could pull off the acquisition of its wireless joint venture with Vodafone Group PLC. McAdam said Verizon has long been interested in such a deal and he thinks his company has the strength to pull it off.

He noted that the venture is functioning well and consolidation of the ownership isn’t necessary. “We have always said we would love to own all of that asset,” he said. Verizon Wireless is 55% owned by Verizon and 45% by Vodafone. The wireless partnership was formed in 2000. While the joint structure allowed the partners to pool assets and share costs at a time when wireless was still relatively new, it has become awkward now that the business is taking the lead role in growth for the telecom companies. Verizon tried to buy Vodafone’s stake in 2006 but failed.

With erroneous reporting seemingly on the rise, industry leaders say local TV news operations need to make getting the facts straight a top priority this year if the medium is to stay credible.

“What it boils down to is doing your job — whatever your responsibility is — and that’s checking your sources,” says RTDNA Executive Director Mike Cavender. “It’s no more complex than that.” Although vetting information is a core — and utterly basic — component of all kinds of journalism, the accuracy of broadcast news has recently waned, some observers claim. Industry insiders see a range of culprits behind what they say is broadcasters’ waning attention to detail — most related one way or another to the emergence of new media. The demand to continually crank out content for multiple platforms, just part of the new 24-hour news cycle, is taking its toll on the usual vetting process, they say. So is the massive amount of incorrect information circulated online and via social media, which TV news operations sometimes repurpose, usually on digital platforms, assuming that it is true. The nuts and bolts of managing technology is also a contributor, news executives say. Behind the scenes, stations having, say, just one or two-person digital teams managing content on a myriad of platforms — websites, social media, email alerts and Smartphone apps, for example — gives those people very little time to spend on confirming content.