Category: media ownership & consolidation

Before the Thanksgiving holiday I compiled a few recent articles on media consolidation and the upcoming FCC review of ownership rules. I hoped to comment on them but didn’t have the time. But rather than let them get old and moldy I’ll link you to them in case you missed ’em: From the Nov. 21…

On Monday the Times published its take on the media consolidation vs. diversity question — its title gives away its overall slant: “Fewer Media Owners, More Media Choices.”… Of course, the article is framed as a battle of regulation vs. deregulation — which as I’ve ranted before, is really an innacurate and overly simplistic view…

As expected, the FCC said “yeah, baby” to a deal between Comcast and AT&T Broadband, wherein the former will acquire the latter. This creates the largest cable company in the US, with twice as many customers as the #2 company, Time-Warner cable. Any cable subscriber with a brain (and who isn’t a major stockholder) has…

MediaSavvy notes a new report that enumerates the many ways that our local telephone companies (or “Regional Bell Operating Companies” aka RBOCs) are lying to us and picking our pockets. And my local telco, SBC/Ameritech, has got to be one of the worst. I’m still reeling from the fact that the Illinois regulators approved the…

Although the FCC has no direct regulatory power over newspapers, if the bureau goes ahead with loosening or tossing out the cross-ownership ban, this would like have effects on the nation’s newspapers, nonetheless. In the American Journalism Review John Morton analyzes some of the ways in which newspapers might be impacted.

Regarding pending FCC approval for a cable TV merger between Comcast and AT&T, atnewyork.com reports that The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Media Access Project (MAP), two Washington-based advocacy groups, said the contact between Roberts and the FCC “typifies the behind the scene insider lobbying of special interest national politics.” Everyone knows that…

Last week the FCC released a series of research reports it commissioned on the topic of media ownership and regulation. For the most part, these reports are heavily econometric, relying on supposed “hard data” that mostly amounts to things they can count without too much effort. No surprise, then, that the bulk of these studies…

Christopher Maxwell from Radio Free Richmond points out this report from Radio and Records that stations in Indiana and Missouri owned by Michael Rice have been shut down by the FCC because of Rice’s felony criminal record. The FCC said that it’s action is “incontrovertibly final,” due to the Commission’s belief that Rice misrepresented his…