Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Red, white and blue in the face: We must rein in FCC

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 18:52:45 -0400

Friday, July 02, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific

Kay McFadden / Times staff columnist
Red, white and blue in the face: We must rein in FCC

TV viewing is essentially passive. But even couch potatoes can sprout
buds, and so I'm asking you this Fourth of July weekend
to do your bit for the First Amendment.

It's easy. You just need to get your hands on a computer, then demand
your right as a citizen to make the Federal Communications Commission
hold hearings on new media-ownership rules.
At the end of this column, I'll explain how. First, the why.

You must do this because you cannot rely on donation-fatted politicians
running for office to do it. You cannot trust the federal
agency appointed to protect your interest.
Luckily, you already are on a grass-roots roll.

The FCC got a well-deserved kick in the pants on June 24 when the 3rd
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia threw
out the commission's attempt to relax ownership rules.

The new FCC rules would have let corporations buy more radio and
television stations in the same market. It also would have
allowed cross-ownership of newspapers in the same market where a company
already owns TV and radio, and vice versa.
Full disclosure: The Times has a publisher. His name is Frank Blethen.
He is adamantly opposed to the FCC's media-expansion
rules. He did not ghostwrite this column. In fact, he'll be reading it
for the first time the same time you do.

Blethen or no Blethen, the court's decision was widely called a victory
for the more than two million Americans who inundated
the FCC with outraged letters, e-mail and faxes protesting the
regulations and the hasty way in which they were overhauled.
Their concern was justified. Here are some reminders of what happens
when big media runs amok:

• Sinclair Broadcasting blocks its ABC-affiliated stations from airing
"Nightline" because the company's executives don't care
for Ted Koppel reading aloud the names of those who died in Iraq to make
it free.

• Clear Channel Communications drops Howard Stern from radio stations it
owns under the guise of indecency concerns — or
perhaps because the formerly pro-Republican shock jock had begun
criticizing President Bush's conduct of the war.

• Cable rates have become astronomical under rules that make it
virtually impossible for satellite TV and other rivals to
compete on an equal footing in the same market.

• Since 1975, two-thirds of independently owned newspapers have
vanished. According to figures from the American
Newspaper Publishers Association and the Writers Guild of America, only
281 of 1,500 papers remain in nonchained hands.

• Local radio is becoming extinct. A handful of companies now dictate
the same playlists, the same meager headline news and
in some cases, the same animatronic on-air hosts across America.

• Into the void of radio news has stepped one source: National Public
Radio. It is the origin of more than 90 percent of the
public-affairs programming that radio listeners get: a virtual monopoly.

These trends are ominous. They point to a homogenized culture in which a
diversity of ideas will be stifled.
Yet such is the influence of big media in Washington, D.C., that FCC
chief Michael Powell held one public hearing — just one
— before ramming through the new rules.

It was the five-member FCC's two Democratic commissioners who instigated
a whistle-stop series of unofficial hearings,
including one in Seattle. The actions of Jonathan Adelstein and Michael
Copps exposed the FCC's attempted sneak, even
though the new rules eventually were passed by a 3-2 vote.

Thereafter, the issue quickly become more democratic than Democratic. A
rare coalition of liberals and conservatives, including
the Parents Television Council and the American Civil Liberties Union,
arrayed itself in opposition to the relaxed rules.
A good thing, too. Because we the people could not rely on our elected
officials to represent our best interests in the run-up to
an election year.

Amid the furor over FCC rules, lawmakers passed legislation allowing
broadcasters to increase their size by raising the
percentage of stations owned from 35 to 39 percent.

That's 39 percent of all TV households nationwide — or about where
Viacom, parent of CBS, UPN and MTV Networks, and
News Corp., owner of Fox, currently stand.

On the other hand, the FCC had tried to raise the ownership cap to 45
percent. Such is the slim debt we owe to Congress.
The 3rd Court's ruling did not address this topic, saying the subject
was "moot" because of the new law.
That brings us up to the present.

The FCC has been instructed to return to the drawing board. Among the
court's directives are that the FCC come up with a
better "market-diversity" formula for judging the impact of raising
ownership caps of TV stations.
The court was less critical of the FCC's lifting of radio-market
ownership restrictions and of the newspaper-broadcast
ownership ban, but it still wants better justification.

Wednesday, FCC commissioner Copps said the agency could consider
tightening ownership rules to satisfy the court.
But history already has proven that the FCC requires a loud shout from
the public.
Here's where you come in, little potato.

Go to www.freepress.net and click on "Media Ownership Rules." Right on
the page will be a petition requesting the FCC to do
what it should have done the first time around: allow the citizens of
this country a voice in the airwaves that by right belong to all
of us.
Kay McFadden: [email-masked]
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2001970188_kay02.html

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