Five business days is not enough lead time to schedule a dentist’s
appointment, or even to get your show listed in this paper, let alone
to inform the entire population of the Pacific Northwest of their
only opportunity to publicly sound off on the most sweeping media
ownership rule changes proposed in a decade. Yet five business days
is exactly the notice that Bush-nominated Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin gave us when he announced on
Friday, November 2, that the final of six FCC public hearings taking place around the country on the hot-button issue of media
consolidation and localism is to be held on Friday, November 9 at Town Hall Seattle from 4-11 pm.
As Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the bipartisan FCC’s
Democratic commissioners (and those most vocally opposed to the
conglomerate-enabling proposed rule changes), put it in their
scrappy press release chiding Martin for his bad faith effort: “A
hearing with only five days notice is no nirvana for Seattle and the
Pacific Northwest. This smells like mean spirit.”
Unfortunately, the FCC’s politically expedient disregard for
procedure and public opinion is nothing new; nor are the rule changes
on the table themselves.
Back in 2003—in spite of literally millions of negative
comments from the public and a broad resistance that brought
together such unnatural allies as National Organization for Women and
the National Rifle Association—the previous FCC chairman put
forward, and then pushed through, a set of rule changes that promised
to continue the media deregulation begun in the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 that made homogenizing corporate media juggernauts like
Clear Channel possible by granting them the freedom to own a far
greater quantity of television and radio stations than had previously
been allowed. However, because the FCC failed to observe the proper
process for soliciting public feedback, a federal appeals court struck
the new rules down. The FCC then essentially said “do-over,”
reinitiating the rule change process, which they have now once again
“streamlined,” apparently with an eye to sneaking these same revisions
in before the ’08 elections.
The FCC rule changes would permit a single company to own eight
radio stations, three television stations, one newspaper, one cable
company, and one ISP in a city the size of Portland. Studies have
repeatedly shown that media consolidation leads to less coverage of all
things local, from the news to music. While we have seen some small
gains recently in local radio playing Portland music, we need more
independent, community-minded, locally programmed, homegrown broadcast
options—not fewer. This is a sentiment that the FCC and our
elected representatives need to hear.
For more information on this issue, go to reclaimthemedia.org.
P.S. Remember to support all-ages music by emailing the OLCC before
November 13!