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Big things are happening in the telecommunications and media industries. Since 1996, when the landmark federal Telecommunications Act was passed, media and telecom companies have been rapidly buying each other up. Today, just a handful of firms are responsible for most of the information that the average American sees, hears or reads. But since the collapse of the Internet bubble, many of these conglomerates have been humbled. In the last few months, we've seen the release of several startling financial reports detailing some of the biggest losses in American business history. Many top managers have been dismissed, and some companies have begun divesting themselves of the acquisitions they had made only a few years earlier. The disruptions faced by the communications industry seem only too familiar this year and echo the problems the energy industry faced with deregulation. But the energy debacle has been front-page news, while reporting on the parallel and similarly expensive missteps of the media and telecom companies, firms for which many Editors Guild members work, has largely been confined to the business pages. Enter the FCC. Michael Powell (son of Colin) is the Bush administration's new head of the Federal Communications Commission. He came to power during the Internet boom, talking about the elimination of federally mandated limits to media ownership. These long-standing rules include restrictions on the percentage of households a broadcaster can cover nationally, limits to cross-ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market, limits on the number of radio and TV stations that can be owned by one company in a single market, and restrictions on mergers among the networks. As we went to press, the FCC proposed a formal review of those rules, with a brief public comment period. The changes are supported by most media companies, who are spending a great deal of money lobbying for them, and are opposed by many consumer groups and Hollywood guilds. Only one of the four current FCC commissioners, Michael Copps, the sole Democrat on the commission, supports their retention. Media ownership restrictions, and the bigger question of media deregulation in general, seem far from the consciousness of most Americans. The issues are not black and white and can't easily be explained in a sound bite. But the effects may well be profound, because they have the power to fundamentally shape the views and, by extension, the votes of all Americans. The key question is whether large concentrations of media power are good for society -- whether a few big competitors provide enough diversity to support a robust and adaptable democracy. The FCC seems to be saying yes -- the free market will produce the best media universe. Let us hope that the free-marketers are right. Because without a great deal of public comment in the next few months, it seems likely that we are all going to become part of a grand experiment -- a long-term beta test of a society operating with less and less citizen control of its media. |
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