Mainstream Media No Longer Dominates
by Paul McGoldrick
How would you feel if the three judges of a federal appeals court told you were doing something that was "arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law?" I personally would feel like the smallest of the small, and I would probably go hide hanging my head in shame. Well, the FCC -- against whom this statement was made -- has nowhere to hide and has never felt shame for any of its decisions (or, more often, lack of decisions) since it bowed to commercial threats during the AM stereo debacle of the 1980s.
The court was ruling on a case brought to appealate level by News Corp. and Viacom, each of which ended up, in the last 18 months, having a potential audience in the U.S. for their television properties of about 39% of the population. This happened when News Corp, acquired Chris-Craft Industries to add to its Fox Network, and Viacom acquired CBS. FCC rules specify that no one owner can have the facilities to address more than 35% of the U.S. population.
This "arbitrary" and "capricious" rule is a leftover from the fear of government that any particular media mogul might have more influence on the population than the propaganda of government itself. The fear was at least partly justified by the incredible influence that newspaper moguls had on the country in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century; the government of the day, during the first years of television, could see that the three networks might develop the same control. That bred the O&O (owned-and-operated) stations of the networks together with the non-owned affiliates.
The day that cable television started this rule should have been discarded.
With the expansion of cable in many cities to hundreds of channels, and
the availability of satellite programming, the rule is even more outdated.
The court, unfortunately, didn't throw the rule out: It ruled in favor of
the broadcasters but remanded the matter of the rule back to the FCC for
review and justification. Let's hope that the taxpayer is not asked to pay
for further challenges to support this rule by the FCC appealing to the
U.S. Supreme Court. I hope the commission is at least big enough not to
do that.