"FCC Chief Wants To Ease TV Station Cross Ownership With Radio And Newspapers"

[WinkyDink]

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is prepared to junk federal rules that limit companies from owning TV and radio stations in the same market — and go half way in doing the same for TV stations and newspapers. He’s circulating a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would wipe out the TV-newspaper restriction in the 20 largest markets, trade magazine Broadcasting and Cable reports citing “a person familiar with the document.” But it would keep a test that could block a combo in smaller markets if it would result in less local news, less diversity of voices, or too much concentration of economic power. Genachowski’s proposal sounds a lot like the standard that former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, pushed through in 2008.
http://www.deadline.com/2011/11/fcc-chief-wants-to-ease-tv-station-cross-ownership-with-radio-and-newspapers/
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Seriously; what is left to say?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rfranklin]

2. It's not a "free press" if one guy owns it all...

I propose a new rule which restricts ownership of newspapers, radio stations and tv stations to five in total in any combination but they have to all be in different markets.

That would bring some real free speech back to the USA.

[Tsiyu]

3. Left to say

Not much, but tears and a sense of betrayal.

The FCC is now merely another government-funded tool of the BIG corporations. The FCC does not protect the interests of the American people and should be disbanded.

They don't work for us.

The FCC exists for the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world.

The US citizen who pays Genechowski's salary is kicked in the teeth again, denied access to fair, unbiased reporting, and gets to see the media score another coup in the disinformation/propaganda wars.

Disheartening, disgusting and criminal.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. What is left to say?

The corporate media have lots more to say. There's propaganda to be catapulted, yunno. The media moguls are salivating over the prospect of being able to saturate any given market with whatever message they want foisted upon the people's consciousness - and that there could be no viable alternative to the only game in town.

[The Genealogist]

5. The FCC, in its present form, is useless

Unless they reform the FCC, we might as well dump it. Its purpose is basically to manage a part of the commons, namely the airwaves and some other modes of communication. On a good day, the FCC merely mismanages the airwaves, on a bad one they don't bother to do anything. The airwaves are supposed to be for everyone, not a commodity for the rich to take over to spew propaganda and rake in even more ridiculous amounts of money.

One of my hobbies is DXing, searching for, identifying and logging AM, FM, TV and other stations. If you look at the AM band, for instance, there are rules for when stations are supposed to be on, off, what power they operate at, when they are supposed to announce their call letters and city of license. Many stations are supposed to go off, at sunset, others are supposed to drop their power, some are supposed to change the directional pattern of their signals. Often, it seems that the stations are not dropping power, or not going off the air when they are supposed to, so they interfere with one another. I hear fellow hobbyists talk about it quite a bit, but many say the FCC apparently doesn't pay much attention.

Without FCC diligence and some hard and fast rules, stations could just broadcast on whatever power they wanted. They could deliberately block other stations with less power, the more powerful signals could disrupt other forms of communication. It would be anarchy. The FCC just doesn't seem to care about this, or really anything else it is supposed to be taking care of, as in the case of the issue the OP brought up. If the FCC is not going to do its job, get rid of it and stop wasting money on it.

[KharmaTrain]

6. Why Would One Want To Buy Into Two Graveyards?

Print has been spilling red ink for the past decade as people go online and away from dead trees for news and information. Advertisers have followed.

Radio's a total clusterfuck where most the major broadcast corporations are swimming in billions in debt.

Any corporate that buys into those messes deserve to go belly-up and the stockholders sue for negligence.

[unionworks]

7. more change

We can believe in