The morning of June 2, right after the FCC made their swift ruling, suddenly most Americans at least became aware of the proceedings- it was all over the news- the first most people had heard about it, and not that many understood what it meant or the implications. I’ll grant you, the matter isn’t something terribly exciting to read about nor would it captivate most Americans who have been trained by the media to gobble up sensationalism. But then most things ‘legislative’ rarely are, despite the fact that this is the stuff that truly affects the American people, the kind of news that really matters and makes a difference in our lives. Back in 1996, when the FCC relaxed the restrictions on radio station ownership, few people without a vested interest took notice. Today though, because of the results of that ruling, the public has noticed- and no one’s happy with what has resulted from those changes. Through a series of mergers, radio is now owned by a handful of corporate behemoths who give the public little choice and no voice.

These proceedings were announced by the FCC last September, yet the media did everything in it’s power to prevent the public from becoming informed of the situation. There was never a mention of it on TV or radio news, and only the people who read their newspapers from cover to cover may have caught an occasional couple of paragraphs regarding it, buried somewhere way in the back. A little background as to why...The media has been lobbying the FCC to relax the rules for several years now. According to a report recently issued by The Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group funded in part by the Ford Foundation, media companies spent $2.8 million over the last eight years doing this. FCC commissioners and their staff were transported to communications industry conferences and conventions where they would be asked to speak on a panel, or address a luncheon. Of the thousand or more trips examined by researchers for the Center for Public Integrity, 330 of these meetings were in Las Vegas, 173 were in New Orleans, followed by others, ranked by frequency, in New York, London, Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando, Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Francisco. FCC people also received free trips to Paris, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Beijing. FCC Chairman Michael Powell accepted the most industry sponsored travel and entertainment...44 trips, costing $84,921, a good portion of it on first class air fares, according to the center. This is in addition to the 2 million dollar annual budget the FCC provides for travel expenses. The Bush administration also supported the relaxation of the regulations, and perhaps not so coincidentally, Michael Powell also just so happens to be the son of Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the present FCC commission is made up of 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. On the flip side, the FCC held only one public hearing on February 27^th, and that was granted only under heavy pressure to hold any public hearings- and the virtually unanimous sentiment they received from the public, as well as many organizations and special interest groups, was vehement opposition to relaxing the restrictions. And considering the lack of press this matter received, the FCC received more than a half million written letters of opposition.

The reason why suddenly the public at large became aware of this hearing after the FCC made their ruling was that the ruling went as expected- Powell and the two Republican commissioners made no secret of their intentions to relax the regulations. The two Democrats voted in opposition. The ruling went in their favor- and the media was celebrating their ‘victory.’ Though these particular rulings mostly dealt with TV and print media and issues of cross-ownership, they were afraid if the public became aware and informed on the matter beforehand- they wouldn’t be able to overcome the outcry as the public pointed to the disastrous results radio deregulation. However, lest you conclude that this was another case of ‘liberals’ vs. ‘conservatives,’ think again. Heavy opposition came from all sides- not only from people and organizations labeled as being ‘liberal,’ but from the moderates, consumer advocate organizations, and yes- a sizable portion of the conservative front- including people like Trent Lott and organizations such as the National Rifle Association. Even Ted Turner, who made his fortune in media, expressed his opposition. Presently, there are so many Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress who are very unhappy with this ruling, they are preparing to challenge it through regular governmental channels.

However, the public won one very small battle on the radio front. The FCC changed how local radio markets are defined to correct a problem that has allowed some companies to exceed the limits in some areas. While I wasn’t able to find exactly which problem this will correct, I’m guessing by Clear Channel’s reaction and the fact that they may have to sell a few of their stations, it’s a technicality they took full advantage of...While they didn’t exceed the actual ownership limits in a particular market, they did acquire stations in neighboring markets where the radio signal overlapped from one market into another. Clear Channel was not pleased with this ruling as President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Mays said in a statement:

"Clear Channel is deeply disappointed with today's FCC vote to re-regulate the radio industry. While the FCC is supposed to act in the public interest, today they missed the mark by a mile. This FCC action will extinguish the substantial consumer benefits brought on by radio deregulation in 1996.

Just ten years ago, nearly 60 percent of the nation's radio stations were operating in the red, cutting news budgets and laying off employees. Deregulation changed all that. But instead of letting radio stations find better and more innovative ways to serve their listeners, the FCC is intent on turning the clock back to a time when the industry was incapable of providing consumers the variety of programming it does today.

Unfortunately, the FCC chose politics over the public interest, and American consumers will be the ultimate victims. We at Clear Channel will continue to keep our eye on the consumer, striving to provide the absolute best in entertainment, local news and information each and every day. Our listeners and the communities we serve deserve nothing less."

A rather interesting comment, considering Clear Channel founder Lowry Mays made the following statement in the March 3 issue of Fortune magazine:

"If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn't be someone from our company," says Mays, 67. "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers products."

Also rather interesting comments coming from a company that employs minimal staffing at their stations after laying off most of a station’s staff as they acquire them, have laid off most of a station’s news staff or got rid of it altogether, cut variety by separating broad genres (such as rock or R&B) into micro sub-genres and moving them onto different stations, substantially reduced the size of play lists, and who, in further cost cutting measures, uses voice tracking and airs programming that originates from one station and broadcasts it to others across the country, regardless of the market, to do away with hundreds of DJ jobs.

Besides the redefinition of radio markets, the new ruling ups from 35% to 45% the number of households a TV station may reach, and now permits companies cross-ownership of newspapers and TV stations, something which before this was prohibited, as was ownership of a TV station and a radio station in the same market. Under the new ruling, in a major market, a company may now own one newspaper, three TV stations and up to 8 radio stations. In smaller markets with at a minimum of 5 TV stations, two may be owned by a single company. In markets with less than 3 TV stations, cross-ownership is still banned. News Corp. owned by Rupert Murdoch, Tribune Co., and Viacom were ecstatic over the ruling, as these companies already exceeded regulation limits and if the regulations were upheld, would have had to sell off assets.

Powell defends the new FCC ruling by saying the current rules threatened the future of free television by putting an unfair burden on the major networks in their competition with pay television services for quality programming, and that consumers have many more choices today, with cable, satellite and the internet. They also don’t feel that there will a flurry of mergers that will create even larger behemoths than already exist. Obviously they haven’t learned any lessons from radio deregulation. And there’s a problem with Powell’s statements. News Corp., Viacom, Disney/ABC, AOL-Time-Warner, these companies already dominate TV, own the most popular Web sites, the majority of cable programming and cable channels, not to mention the major Hollywood film studios. Viacom’s already poised to start snapping up more stations and after the ruling was announced, their stock shot up. Lowell (Bud) Paxton who’s PAX TV includes 66 stations is banking on NBC who owns a 33% stake in the company, to now buy the rest. Rupert Murdoch is looking to buy satellite broadcast provider DirectTV, despite the fact that News Corp. shareholders are against the purchase, due to an already overwhelming debt load.

This sounds eerily familiar to what happened with radio deregulation. Larger companies ate up smaller companies in merger after merger chasing after the biggest piece of the pie. In the process, they borrowed heavily to finance their acquisitions, and wound up with a tremendous debt load that had to be repaid. In order to do that, staff had to be cut to the bare bones to cut costs, and more advertising time sold to raise badly needed capital to repay loans at the cost of programming. Thus we now have the vast wasteland of colorless, bland cookie cutter radio stations that no longer reflect the diverse markets that span the country, computerized play lists which cannot be deviated from that are drawn up by analyzing data rather than the tastes and preferences of actual human beings, shorter play lists to make room for more advertising time and the lack of staff to properly man a radio station the way it should be. Lucky is the radio station these days that even has a real live DJ manning the mic, rather than a pre-taped show or voice tracking from some other far off market.

TV hasn’t been terribly different from radio over the past several years- even without the easing of restrictions. Already there’s channel after channel, and hour after hour, of ‘reality’ TV- a cheap, mindless cash cow that’s brought TV to an all time record low, which has made it unappealing and unnecessary to these companies to spend money to develop and produce intelligent and quality programming. As far as the cross-ownership aspect, the original restrictions were put in place as a system of checks and balances- whereas print media would be monitoring TV media and vice versa, keeping each other in line. However, this new ruling will sharply reduce the number of independent voices out there, because with cross-ownership, the bigger media chains can pre-package their news content and political views within their single market subsidiaries- newspapers, TV, radio- and additionally, their Web sites. As with radio deregulation, there will be less diversity, less voices being heard, not more. In this capitalistic society, this has been proved time after time, it does not promote competition, it promotes greed- a race to see which corporation will become the biggest and most powerful. Independents no longer stand a chance and are being shut out of the competition. There are but a very small handful of movie studios, record labels and radio station owners that are in control of the overwhelming majority of what we hear, see and buy today. The media companies who benefited from the new FCC ruling are already dominating forces in the industry, and will only gain more girth.