Media Ownership: Must the Show Go On?

MEDIA OWNERSHIP: MUST THE SHOW GO ON?
[SOURCE: TVNewsDay, AUTHOR: Harry A. Jessell]
[Commentary] The show at FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's renomination hearing served to remind Martin that a lot of important people on Capitol Hill care about media ownership. And those people may become more important if the Democrats emerge from the November elections in control of the House and/or Senate. But is it any more than that? Let’s assume the worse (at least as Boxer sees it) and say that the studies in question both landed on desks of Martin and Powell at some point and that one or both immediately ordered that all copies be bundled up and thrown into the Tidal Basin. Well, so what? There’s no law against the higher ups shelving staff studies that they don't think are well done or don't support the policy goals of the day. And there’s no law that says they have to make them public. I'm willing to bet that if you shook the Portals hard enough, you could fill the Tidal Basin with such memos and studies, some going back to the Hoover Administration. The FCC is a political operation. In any proceeding, the chairman decides what the result is going to be and then gets the staff to do some selective research to get to that result. The chairman’s principal job is simply making sure he has at least three votes. It is probably true that further consolidation is unlikely to increase diversity. Most of the people buying stations are those who already own stations and can take advantage of the economies of scale in buying more. Because of those economies, they can usually outbid newcomers of any gender or color. But freezing the ownership rules as they are is not going to help much.
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2006/09/25/daily.2/