Is there a “there there?”
Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps if there is still a “there there” when he hosts a public comment hearing on April 30th to ask St. Petersburg residents what they think of their local broadcast media. FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin seems to think that Copps’ concern over media ownership concentration is a joke.
Copps wrote an opinion printed in the St. Petersburg Times:
Three years ago, a majority at the FCC voted — over the strong objections of my colleague Jonathan Adelstein and me — to scrap many of the ownership limits. They did so without seeking the input of the American people. Those flawed rules would have allowed a single corporation to own in some markets up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the local newspaper (a monopoly in most towns), as well as the cable system and Internet service provider. Thankfully, that indefensible decision stirred up a hornet’s nest of public outrage.
Three-million citizens contacted the FCC to express their opposition. They wrote out of a strong belief that we desperately need rules to prevent one-size-fits-all news from becoming the acceptable standard in our communities and to replace those awful homogenized national playlists from completely displacing local musicians and other creative artists. Congress went on record with its concerns, too. And then a federal court found the rules both substantively and procedurally flawed and sent them back to us to rework. It was good news that citizen action actually checked those outrageous rules. But the threat persists.
Last summer, the FCC launched a review that might severely scale back the few remaining media consolidation protections. These rules, among other things, limit a single corporation from dominating local TV and radio markets or from merging a community’s TV stations, radio stations and newspapers.
So a new dialogue is underway. But this time, it needs to be much more than an inside-the-Beltway discussion.
Let’s remember that American citizens, not TV and radio executives, own the airwaves. We give broadcasters the right to use these airwaves for free. They earn profits (usually very healthy profits) using this public resource in exchange for agreeing to broadcast in the public interest.
We need to know whether the good folks of the town where I once lived feel they are being well-served by the media. Are they getting the diversity of viewpoint they want? Do news programs provide real insight into what’s going on in minority communities, or do they present a misleading caricature of Latinos and African-Americans? Is news and entertainment on TV and radio designed to appeal to viewers of all ages, or are broadcasters gearing their programming exclusively to the supposed interests of the prized 18-to-34-year-old demographic?
Even if the future of our media is not your No. 1 issue, it needs to be your No. 2 issue. That’s because Americans get their input and develop their views about all the other critical issues of the day — the economy, jobs, peace and war, health care, education — from the media. They learn about them on TV news, hear about them on the radio and read about them in the newspaper. I can’t think of any of these issues that wouldn’t fare much better in an open, diverse, community-responsive and competitive media environment.
Seventy years ago, Gertrude Stein returned to her hometown (Oakland, Calif.) to find that she could not locate her childhood home. She famously stated, “There is no there there.” When our children look one day at the media system we have left them, and take up the reins of self-government, I hope they don’t share Stein’s chilling conclusion.
So I urge you to attend the FCC hearing. We need your input and the input of as many of our fellow citizens as we can elicit. I believe we have the best chance in our generation to settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes, and to resolve it in favor of airwaves of, by, and for the people of this great country. But it will take a lot of us, working together, to make it happen.
As the FCC starts moving to allow even more media ownership concentration, remember that nearly a third of all New Orleans’ radio stations are owned by just two out-of-state corporations.
San Antonio-based Clear Channel owns seven stations in the New Orleans market:
104.1 rock
101.1 country
1280 sport
Q93 hip hop R&B
99.5 talk
98.5 urban adult contemporary
940 gospel
Entercom owns six stations in the New Orleans market:
WWL 870 AM/105.3 FM/1350 AM talk
B97
Magic 101.9
Bayou 95.7