FCC Chairman Tries For More Media Consolidation 182
An anonymous reader writes "FCC chairman Kevin Martin wants to relax rules on how many media outlets one company can own in one market. Democratic commissioner Copps wants to rally the public to stop media consolidation. He says he's 'blowing a loud trumpet' for a 'call to battle' to stop the FCC from giving big media a generous Christmas present."
Re:Pffft. (Score:1, Interesting)
He's been attacked mercilessly for this Dow Jones merger, owning "2 of the 5 biggest newspapers". Except of one those is the Post, which operates at a loss. Murdoch is subsidizing an unsuccessful conservative paper to keep in it production. More diversity, not less.
Consolidation has allowed Murdoch (and presumably others) to keep open additional channels and voices, even unprofitable ones, with the money made by successful ventures. It's a good thing, not bad.
Re:FCC (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Media Monopoly Cartel (Score:2, Interesting)
As one example, what if we found a way to make the radio spectrum freely available to all without mutual interference, so that as many people who wanted to broadcast, could? If it weren't for the scarcity of usable frequencies imposed by past-generation technology, would we need or want the FCC to be telling corporations how many stations they can own in an area. And would the FCC be able to impose censorship or (currently at bay) a "fairness doctrine" using the excuse that it can impose any restrictions it wants on a limited public resource? We may actually be seeing this unlimited-resource situation in the Net;
Re:FCC creates its own necessity (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pffft. (Score:3, Interesting)
Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch were players in the Australian media market place, they each staked their claim but from different parts of the market - Murdoch from News Papers and Packer from Television stations, both were conservatives. They both expanded until they were eyeing each other off, Murdoch looking over some local television stations and Packer eyeing off some print news assets, there was only one thing stopping them, Cross media ownership laws. Now they had a common cause.
In Australia they lobbied tirelessly to have cross media ownership laws broken down until finally our previous conservative government gave in and relaxed the laws, the buying frenzy began even before the laws were passed, and as we regress to what is happening in Canada something happened that gave us a glimpse of post-media-mogul media.
Murdoch finally realised that the Australian market was just too small for him to play in anymore, and expanded into America, grooming his son for taking over the growing media empire.
Packer expanded into Internet gambling assets, bought into Fox and kept an iron fist on the control of the Nine network in Australia. When he was passing the media empire over to his son, you could see the glint of pride in his eyes. Then he died, James sold the nine network to concentrate on greener pastures (I guess he wasn't interested in his fathers passion), leaving nine as a shell of what it once was pwned by some faceless investment con-glomerate.
The legacy of both these men are the media cross ownership laws as a template for the world. The moral of the story is once the man with the passion dies you are left with the banal framework of the control he established and you might not like who/what takes over that control - that is what happened here.