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FCC Chairman Tries For More Media Consolidation
An anonymous reader writes "FCC chairman Kevin Martin wants to relax rules on how many media outlets one company can own in one market. Democratic commissioner Copps wants to rally the public to stop media consolidation. He says he's 'blowing a loud trumpet' for a 'call to battle' to stop the FCC from giving big media a generous Christmas present."
While you might not care for Murdoch's brand of politics or his business style, it is difficult to argue that he has done anything but increase diversity in the media marketplace. Before he launched Fox, there were 3 networks. He created a new one, with a distinctly different politic perspective.
He's been attacked mercilessly for this Dow Jones merger, owning "2 of the 5 biggest newspapers". Except of one those is the Post, which operates at a loss. Murdoch is subsidizing an unsuccessful conservative paper to keep in it production. More diversity, not less.
Consolidation has allowed Murdoch (and presumably others) to keep open additional channels and voices, even unprofitable ones, with the money made by successful ventures. It's a good thing, not bad.
Creating monopolies? They are also stopping them. The article is about them wanting to change that, so to answer your question, yes. The FCC currently prevents large media conglomerates from getting larger. Without the FCC, there would likely be only one media conglomerate in America, owning all publishing, television, radio, and movies.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So, if the current practice of having a federal bureaucracy that dictates who can own what and what people are allowed to say, allows the current state of the media to exist, how great is it? Might there not be more freedom of competition, and more voices, if there weren't a federal agency charged with managing our ability to talk and write? There wasn't much push for government management of the media in early America (except maybe the Sedition Act) yet even with that era's primitive tech, there were a variety of newspaper and pamphlet voices out there. (Anyone who says that modern media are biased and rabid, by the way, should read an eighteenth-century newspaper.)
As one example, what if we found a way to make the radio spectrum freely available to all without mutual interference, so that as many people who wanted to broadcast, could? If it weren't for the scarcity of usable frequencies imposed by past-generation technology, would we need or want the FCC to be telling corporations how many stations they can own in an area. And would the FCC be able to impose censorship or (currently at bay) a "fairness doctrine" using the excuse that it can impose any restrictions it wants on a limited public resource? We may actually be seeing this unlimited-resource situation in the Net;
Revive the Constitution.
In the ideal world, there would be no government regulation. However, because radio waves are a government regulated commodity, Joe Schmoe can't hijack, for example, FOX's airwaves and broadcast his own competing opinion. Sure, it starts a "signal strength" battle, but energy is a limited commodity itself. Eventuall Joe Schmoe can win, only a smaller area. Many Joe Schmoes can pool their resources and win a bunch of smaller areas. To an extent, the Internet has given Joe Schmoe and Media Conglomerates a level playing field. For the first time, their voices can be heard equally. That is, until Net Neutrality gets bashed in the face. However, this is merely a leveled playing field. For every website/blog started by Joe Schmoe, the Media Conglomerates can start one. The Media Conglomerates still have the airwaves... which are protected from Joe Schmoe by the Government, thereby creating it's own necessity to regulate the Media Conglomerates.
Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch were players in the Australian media market place, they each staked their claim but from different parts of the market - Murdoch from News Papers and Packer from Television stations, both were conservatives. They both expanded until they were eyeing each other off, Murdoch looking over some local television stations and Packer eyeing off some print news assets, there was only one thing stopping them, Cross media ownership laws. Now they had a common cause.
In Australia they lobbied tirelessly to have cross media ownership laws broken down until finally our previous conservative government gave in and relaxed the laws, the buying frenzy began even before the laws were passed, and as we regress to what is happening in Canada something happened that gave us a glimpse of post-media-mogul media.
Murdoch finally realised that the Australian market was just too small for him to play in anymore, and expanded into America, grooming his son for taking over the growing media empire.
Packer expanded into Internet gambling assets, bought into Fox and kept an iron fist on the control of the Nine network in Australia. When he was passing the media empire over to his son, you could see the glint of pride in his eyes. Then he died, James sold the nine network to concentrate on greener pastures (I guess he wasn't interested in his fathers passion), leaving nine as a shell of what it once was pwned by some faceless investment con-glomerate.
The legacy of both these men are the media cross ownership laws as a template for the world. The moral of the story is once the man with the passion dies you are left with the banal framework of the control he established and you might not like who/what takes over that control - that is what happened here.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.