Fcc Plans For Loosening Limits Likely To Proceed

Opponents predict the plan to further relax media ownership regulations will go forward in a June 2 vote, but they are confident that they've brought public attention to the issue.

Despite the expected 3-2 vote by the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission (FCC), opponents say they have created citizen concern that media controlled by big corporations could stunt diversity.

The changes, advanced by FCC chairman Michael Powell, will allow newspapers to acquire TV and radio stations in their markets, raise the broadcast networks' national audience cap from 35% of a market to 45%, and increase the number of cities in which one company can own multiple TV stations.

Democratic commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein held a roundtable discussion of the issue May 26 at FCC headquarters.

Representatives from 27 opposition groups across the political spectrum attended, ranging from the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) to the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists. Powell and two Republican commissioners were invited but did not show.

"If you like what happened to radio after we abandoned concentration protections there," Copps tells Billboard, "just wait till you see what's coming down the pike for radio, TV, and newspapers."

Within a two-week time period, a year-long grassroots effort by liberal public interest groups to stop deregulation has suddenly become front-page news.

This is mainly a result of the added voices of conservative organizations such as the NRA, which has staged an all-out effort to oppose the rule change. Those groups are concerned that deregulation will reduce the amount of conservative viewpoints on the air.

Sources within the FCC tell Billboard that months before the NRA joined the call, liberal public interest groups had pushed the FCC to back away from plans to lift radio ownership caps from eight stations in a market to 10.

The FCC says it has received more than 500,000 comments from the public in recent weeks regarding this issue.

By early May, the FCC's Web site had received more than 9,000 comments from unaffiliated individuals, all but 11 opposing rule changes (Billboard, May 24).

"When's the last time the FCC received half a million complaints?" Copps asks. "Until it threatened to undermine media protections, most people didn't even know what the FCC was."

The headlines follow calls from legislators on both sides of the aisle for the FCC to hold off on rule changes until there is further study of the possible ramifications of changes.

Common Cause and MoveOn.org launched a $250,000 opposition press campaign last week, placing ads in the major dailies on May 28.