In
the past decade, FM broadcast audiences in the US, if they listened
carefully, might have heard something strange in the background: the
sound of vanishing content. Ownership of radio stations was rapidly
being consolidated into the hands of a small number of corporations, as
a result of regulatory relaxation in the 1996
Telecommunications Act.
FM consolidation reached the point
where one corporation owned 1,200 stations, with exclusive ownership in
some markets.
By 2003, the
resultant odor was so foul, the content so dumbed-down and bland,
that it shouldn't have been a surprise when the FCC recieved 750,000
public responses to its NPRM to allow higher media ownership
concentration: more than 200x the response for any previous FCC
rule: over 99% opposed.
Commissioners Adelstein and Copps
held townhall meetings for public
comment,
but in the end, the FCC issued its Order on June 2 on a party line vote
of 3-2, increasing the station ownership cap from 35% of stations in
major markets
to
45%.
The Senate
quickly responded to the public outcry on June 4 with Commerce
Committee hearings (hear
Commissioner Copps dissent),
the 3rd Circuit
Court followed with a stay
of the ruling on
September 3, and the Senate voted to repeal
the entire Ruling on Sept.17.
So - the
public has spoken and media consolidation has been checked,
right? Wrong -
President Bush promised to veto any rollback. To
save him the appearance of defying clear public sentiment, Reps. Delay
and Hastert declared the bill from the Senate "D.O.A," thus
absorbing the hand grenade.
The
transparency of this sequence of events and the US media silence about
them make it hard to avoid concluding that this deregulation,
ideologically driven, was also payment for services *not* rendered. FCC
Chairman Powell remarked that the ruling was mandated by technological
change, but what the consolidation really does is to buy corporate
censorship to the benefit of the deregulator. This de-facto system of
censorship by patronage has been
astonishingly effective. Only one
broadcast source has
covered the death of broadcast news in the US
with intelligence.
• Former BBC Director-General
Greg Dyke
discusses the differences
in the news environments
between
the UK and the US.