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Media Ownership Forum Draws Powell and Co

With more than 2,000 submissions received on the 12 studies commissioned by the FCC's media ownership task force, Chairman Michael Powell and his commissioners hit the pavement last week. Their goal: to discuss and solicit feedback on current ownership limits before deciding this spring which rules to retain, drop, revise or introduce.

The first stop last week was the Senate Commerce Committee. Powell reassured the committee that public interest is paramount in the current review of ownership limits, with all decisions based on whether they enhance diversity, localism and competition.

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That message was reiterated at an all-day forum on the media ownership review held Thursday at Columbia University's law school in New York.

Powell's keynote speech urged the speakers - including Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity; Jon Mandel, president and CEO of ad agency MediaCom; and Ellen Agress, SVP of the Fox Entertainment Group and Fox Television Stations - to present empirical data the FCC could use in its rule-making.

CBS EVP Martin Franks, defending the broadcasters' desire to limit deregulation, said that unless the FCC takes action in the upcoming rule-making, "free television programming" may in the near future cease to be free. He pointed to the migration of many sports to cable or PPV as a warning sign; and with more channels than ever to choose from, advertisers may abandon broadcast for other outlets.

Mandel argued that increased deregulation hurt advertisers and viewers. As ad prices have risen faster than inflation, the prices of products have increased, hurting consumers, who take a double hit because of a decrease in original TV programming with affordable ad rates.

Powell and the three commissioners present (Michael Copps, Kevin Martin and Jonathan Adelstein) defended the integrity of the review process while bemoaning the difficulty of the task.

Martin said that although media concentration has increased, diversity also has increased, pointing to the rise of cable penetration and the number of channels and choices now available to the average viewer. (David Poltrack, CBS EVP of research and planning, cited Nielsen estimates that the average cable household now receives an average of 102 channels as evidence that decreased limits on ownership in recent years hadn't stemmed competition.)

Copps, meanwhile, called for additional public events to further the debate over media ownership rules and the impact on diversity of expression.

Next month Powell and the FCC crew will participate in a second forum (organized by the University of Southern California), while the FCC is hosting its own public hearing in Richmond, Va.

THE NEXT QUESTION:

*How can the FCC "quantify" the arguments it hears into a clear action plan on media ownership?

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Media Ownership Forum Draws Powell and Co

Cable World, Jan 20, 2003

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