Localism's Last Stand

WASHINGTON

General managers of 75 stations owned and operated by the Big Four television networks swept into a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee yesterday. Big Media's lobbying purpose was to squelch the bipartisan movement in Congress to nullify the Federal Communications Commission's cave-in to the networks' lust to gobble up more independent stations.

Before the vote, the majority whip Roy Blunt, on Tom DeLay's orders, leaned on G.O.P. members to allow the F.C.C. cave-in to be financed. The National Association of Broadcasters, which had been supporting its many independent members against the networks' expansion, flip-flopped in panic because NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox threatened to bolt the lobby.

But to everyone's amazement, the networks' power play was foiled. Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia urged his G.O.P. colleagues to vote their consciences, and an amendment to hold the cap on a huge conglomerate's ownership to 35 percent of the national TV audience was passed by a vote of 40 to 25.

Here is what made this happen. Take the force of right-wingers upholding community standards who are determined to defend local control of the public airwaves; combine that with the force of lefties eager to maintain diversity of opinion in local media; add in the independent voters' mistrust of media manipulation; then let all these people have access to their representatives by e-mail and fax, and voilà! Congress awakens to slap down the power grab.

Or at least half of it. In Senator Ted Stevens's rollback-to-35-percent bill approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, an amendment protecting localism had been added to stop the growth of cross-ownership of TV stations and newspapers in single cities. But that amendment won't fly; as the Commerce chairman, John McCain, told me, "The fix is in on cross-ownership." Media General and The New York Times Company are becoming more influential nationally, and The Tribune Company dominates news coverage in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Long Island.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/opinion/17SAFI.html?n=Top%2FOpinion%2FEditorials%20and%20Op-Ed%2FOp-Ed%2FColumnists%2FWilliam%20Safire