News item: The Federal Communications

Commission Monday voted to lift the cap on ownership of broadcast stations.

I agree with Ted Turner and

with Molly Ivins (gasp!). I disagree with the Heritage Foundation, The

Wall Street Journal editorial board and a hoard of my fellow conservatives.

Before you think I've finally

come out of the Leftie closet, let me specify what our disagreement is

about. (I wonder if I've been eating too often at Ted's Montana Grill;

maybe there's too much hidden liberal seasoning?)

It's about radio, and secondarily,

TV. And about who owns the limited number of stations that broadcast on

the public airwaves.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the

Federal Communications Commission lifted many ownership limits on stations,

rules that had been in place for decades. The result, particularly in

radio, was the formation of huge media companies owning hundreds and in

some cases more than a thousand broadcast stations. In my opinion, conglomerates

gained, while the public lost, big time. The latest rules changes allow

even more concentration of ownership of TV stations. And except in the

smallest markets, newspapers, TV and radio stations can now join together.

Radio rules didn't change much in the Monday vote, but they already were

a disaster.

In this matter, I think I am

in fact the true conservative, because I want things the old way, back

before deregulation of the airwaves. I want things the way they were in

the 1950s, when I started broadcasting two hours every weekday evening

on a 250-watt local station, the only station in town. And in the 1960s,

when nearly every radio station had a local newscast, multiple times a

day.

In those halcyon days, one

entity could own a maximum of seven AM stations, seven FM stations and

some similar number of TV stations, and never more than one of each in

a single market. Most broadcasters were small business owners, living

in the very markets they served.

Today, Clear Channel Communications,

a company based in San Antonio, Texas, owns more than 1,200 radio stations.

One thousand two hundred. And there are but about 13,000 radio stations

in existence in the U.S. of A.

Nine of those Clear Channel

stations are in the Atlanta market, including an FM station licensed to

Peachtree City and an AM licensed to Newnan, according to the company's

web site.

Now, the only ownership limits

are linked to markets: No more than eight per market. (I don't know why

that isn't true for Clear Channel's Atlanta properties; maybe the 250-watt

Newnan AM or the Hogansville station don't count.)

Those rules "were written

in a different era, and don't reflect the diversity and competitiveness

in today's media marketplace," asserts the Heritage Foundation's

James Gattuso.

"Even joint ownership

of the same media in the same market (i.e., owning multiple TV or radio

stations in the same market) can provide consumer benefits" Gattuso

says. "For instance, though counter-intuitive, common ownership can

actually increase content diversity. The reason is simple: while owners

with only one station each may all compete for a lowest-common-denominator

market, owners with several stations each are able to target niche markets

with different programming on each station."

But here's where Ted Turner

and I agree. The relaxation of even the puny ownership caps "will

stifle debate, inhibit new ideas and shut out smaller businesses trying

to compete," Turner writes in the Washington Post. "If these

rules had been in place in 1970, it would have been virtually impossible

for me to start Turner Broadcasting or, 10 years later, to launch CNN."

Turner argues, "When you

lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses

are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't

compete by imitating the big guys; they have to innovate. So they are

less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They're willing

to take risks. When, on my initiative, Turner Communications (now Turner

Broadcasting) bought its first TV station, which at the time was losing

$50,000 a month, my board strongly objected. When TBS bought its second

station, which was in even worse shape than the first, our accountant

quit in protest."

Ted and Molly and I don't agree

on much, but we agree on this: For broadcast stations licensed to use

the scarce resource of the limited public airwaves, bigger is most definitely

bad.

Not bad for business (although

it can be for businesses depending on near-monopolistic pricing of advertising),

but bad for the public. And stations are licensed to use those scarce

frequencies "in the public interest, convenience and necessity,"

according to the federal law setting up the F.C.C. Broadcast frequencies

cannot be owned; they can only be rented.

My gut-level objection is to

something that has caused me to abandon listening to radio these days:

the absence of truly local programming, with all of its eccentricities

and local flavor.

"Large media corporations

are far more profit-focused and risk-averse," Turner says. "They

sometimes confuse short-term profits and long-term value. They kill local

programming because it's expensive, and they push national programming

because it's cheap, even if it runs counter to local interests and community

values."

Imagine that: Ted Turner and

I agreeing on anything to do with community values. But, on this, he and

I are brothers under the skin: We both got our start in small broadcasting

operations that operated from payroll to payroll.

I'm a newspaperman now, but

I got into news via local radio: A one-man news operation that jumped

into action when the police radio flared up.

There was a time in America

when, in small towns across this land, when a fire engine passed on a

street, people tuned their AM radios to find out which neighbor's house

was on fire. Local council races featured in-depth interviews with candidates,

and at election time precinct reporters called in ballot tallies before

the figures reached the courthouse. Parents and fans followed local high

school basketball games at home and on the road, via that local radio

station. When bad weather threatened, you knew you could depend on your

local station to warn you and keep you informed.

Why did those small stations

spend so much time and money in producing local news and local coverage?

For most of them, because the F.C.C. of those days made them do it. The

rules mandated that a certain percentage of each broadcast day had to

be given over to news and public service programming.

Nowadays, an F-5 tornado can

be flattening Peachtree City or Buckhead, and you'll still be hearing

rap and rock music uninterrupted except for commercials. Where's the public

service in that?

I say without hesitation, the

down-home radio aspects of those bygone times were better by far than

what we have today: Generic and often smutty wisecrackers who excel in

put-downs and stupidity sandwiched between rapid-fire traffic reports

and unending commercials.

In a few places, mostly too

small to attract the big buyers, small radio owners still operate shoestring

local, sometimes-live, operations, still putting on local voices of local

people. And in a few places, local news still comes on the radio at dependable,

set times, every day. Just like it's supposed to. Not because they have

to. Just because it's the right thing to do, to serve the public interest,

convenience and necessity.

The F.C.C. did no favors for

the public this week. The only "interest, convenience and necessity"

served by the 3-2 vote Monday was that of the media giants, a class of

business that just got bigger.

that F.C.C. decision by legislation. Let your Congressman or -woman know

how you feel about increased media concentration.

This is one area where the

free market, unregulated, works to produce either chaos (as in the pre-F.C.C.

days) or near-monopolies and where the government has a real responsibility

to protect the public. This week, the F.C.C. part of our government failed

in that function.