Re:Wired.com on Reversing Consolidation

[Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>]

<<On Thu, 9 Jan 2003 03:15:20 GMT, Dave Faneuf <tklaundry@juno.com> said:

> Just as a point of reference Senator McCain was the gentleman who
> introduced legislation that would eliminate the crossover ownership
> ban between publications and broadcast outlets in the same market,
> so I would expect him to be interested in this movement, I'm not
> sure his interest would be supportive but hey, he might surprise
> me!~

[602-character-long line reformatted for readability prior to editing]

There's a pretty good reason to eliminate the newspaper
cross-ownership ban: it's probably unconstitutional, in light of the
Supreme Court's recent First Amendment decisions -- in particular, the
case decided a few years ago about gambling advertising.  That case
turned on the court's observation that there were so many exceptions
to the rules, the venues covered by exceptions far outnumbered those
not so excepted --- so the continued enforcement of the rule could not
possibly serve whatever ostensible government interest it may once
have had.

Given the large numbered of grandfathered cross-ownership situations
(WGN, WSB, WTMJ, WQXR, etc.), the large number of permanent waivers
that the FCC has granted (Tribune in several markets,[1] News Corp.,
Scripps, and Hearst in at least one each), and add to that the
discrimination under the rule against owners of local papers in favor
of Gannett, NYTCo, Washington Post Co., and other owners of
nationally-distributed newspapers.

Given the legal climate, the rule will almost certainly fall if the
FCC ever fails to grant a waiver, so Chairman Powell is right to
suggest that it should be repealed entirely.  I would further suggest
that it is actually in the public interest to allow newspapers and
broadcasters to combine operations.

-GAWollman

[1] Including all three of the top three markets, plus two TVs and a
paper in Hartford.