The sound and the fury in the Senate and the House a couple of months ago about the FCC's rules on media ownership were just political posturing.
... it appears that the major TV networks — bolstered by the threat of a presidential veto — have made headway in beating back attempts to reinstate a rule that prevents a broadcast company from reaching more than 35% of the country's TV viewers. The FCC voted June 2 to raise the cap to 45%.
" This is going to be subject to 'Final Jeopardy' negotiations," said Eric Ueland, deputy chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
" My guess is that it will be dropped," said John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), referring to a provision in an earlier appropriations bill that would reinstate the 35% cap. [Media Rule Change May Stick (10/19/03)]
So even if the Senate and House were to pass the cap, it would be vetoed and it's just politics as usual.
Worse, the bills themselves were fakes, because they address only the 35% cap without doing a thing about all the other rule changes FCC Chairman Michael Powell made.
More than a dozen lawsuits were filed challenging the new rules, and a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has temporarily blocked the rules from taking effect. [Court Blocks FCC Media Regs (09/03/03)]
The rule changes came about because the larger media companies [great graphics of media ownership] had alreadybroken the previous ones.
So last June Michael Powell's FCC (he does act as if he owned it) and the Republican majority forced through a newset of regulations.
Instead of bringing the media giants to task for flouting the rules, he changed the rules to give the rule-breakers a free pass on their prior violations and provide them additionalhead room.
Article comments
1 - debbie
Do you think it would make any difference in how they run the radio stations if people got together and wrote the sponsers and told them that they would not purchase their products?
Do you think that the sponsers would then tell the radio stations that they will no longer buy ad time on their stations until changes are made?
I would rather see this tried than to constantly have "new regulations" passed. I'm sick of the government trying to control every aspect of my life.
2 - Hal Pawluk
Advertisers are sensitive to the feedback you suggest, but in this case it would be difficult to do enough to result in, say, Clear Channel improving their programming. There are thousands of advertisers and you'd have to go after some noticeable portion of them, and send enough protests for them to notice you so they would approach the stations.
Wrtiting the stations to complain about the programming reduces the number of places to contact, but you'd have to have some massive number of write-ins to get Clear Channel to change their practices because that would hurt their bottom line.
This may be another one of those deteriorations in the quality of life that's here to stay.
3 - Eric Olsen
thanks Hal, very depressing, hard to believe after all this attention and public outcry that's it's just going to end up the same
4 - Hal Pawluk
What pisses me off is how few Republicans will contact their Senators and House Reps to complain because it's "their" folks doing it. One of the hazards of "living life by label", I guess.
I wrote all of mine [Sen. Feinstein (D), Sen. Boxer (D) and Rep. Dreier (R)], as well as Frist and Hastert (since they're driving, or rather not driving, this).
I've found that nothing changes if I just sit on my ass.
Mind you, in politics, a lot of times nothing changes even when I don't :-)
5 - JR
Debbie: "I would rather see this tried than to constantly have 'new regulations' passed. I'm sick of the government trying to control every aspect of my life."
Wow, I wasn't aware you were a large media company.