DUOPOLIES MAY BE LEFT BEHIND IN DEREG PUSH

When news broke at a Hill hearing a couple of weeks ago that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was finally moving to relax the media ownership rules, small-market broadcasters may have thought the time was coming when they would be allowed to own two top network affiliates in the same market, just as large-market broadcasters can.

Sorry. It’s probably not going to happen.

Amid the renewed uproar over media consolidation, Martin will likely jettison consideration of small-market duopolies to get what he really wants—elimination of the broadcast-newspaper crossownership rule.

That’s as it should be. Repeal of the crossownership ban is long overdue—and increasingly necessary.

Newspapers are under terrible financial strain as the Internet siphons off their advertising revenue in bucketfuls. Who looks for jobs in newspapers anymore?

Sorry broadcasters, but newspapers are where most of the serious reporting is being done these days and that also entitles them to go to the head of the dereg line. I’m not sure that any other medium is ready to pick up newspapers' role of closely covering state and municipal governments and other uneconomical, but vital, beats.

At the very least, the FCC has to take care of Tribune so it can go private, either by granting waivers or by repealing the rule in large markets. Standing in the way of Tribune’s deal would be unconscionable, and I think everybody on the commission—even Michael Copps—knows that.

But it’s a shame that Martin will have to sacrifice action on small-market duopolies for the sake of the newspapers because of ill-informed outrage over media consolidation.

The fact is there are plenty of small-market duopolies today, all the product of waivers or of the FCC’s policy of permitting contracts—LSAs, TBAs, SSAs, JSAs, outsourcing agreements—that allow one station to operate another in the same market to one degree or another.

Each of these contracts is evidence that the small-market duopolies are not bad things, but simply natural marketplace responses to fragmenting audiences and shrinking margins. They have strengthened small-market broadcasting, not weakened it.

No doubt, some of these so-called virtual duopolies have resulted in the loss of independent news voices in their markets. One newsroom produces news for two stations. But in most cases the lost independent voice was the third- or fourth-rated newscast in the market and doomed anyway.

And that small loss of those newsrooms is apparently being offset by the creation of new ones. According to the RTNDA, the number of stations originating news rose this year from 778 to 780.

Right now, the public is getting just one side of the duopoly story.

If small-market broadcasters want action on duopolies, they are going to have to speak up for it. They need to win public support for deregulation. They need to challenge their critics at every opportunity.

Broadcasters have a great story to tell. They can win the debate.

Where do you think those images of the California wildfires are coming from? Why would you want to do anything to choke off with regulation the financial wherewithal that allows stations to provide such a service to the public absolutely free of charge?

Listen to the media critics at the public hearings. They want diversity of viewpoints, they want aggressive and honest reporting, they want insightful analysis and they want bold commentary.

The broadcasters’ argument is that government cannot deliver any of those things. In fact, government, by its nature, is hostile to those goals. That’s why we have a First Amendment—to protect media from government.

In sort of an unplanned, messy, random fashion, Washington has dealt with the media ownership issue in exactly the right way over the past quarter century.

It has gradually relaxed broadcast ownership restrictions in a series of widely spaced FCC and congressional actions, giving the country time to absorb each of the changes and giving broadcasters a chance to meet the competition.

Martin is right. It’s now time to take the next steps—first newspaper crossownership and then duopolies.

Harry A. Jessell is the editor of TVNEWSDAY. If you have a comment on this column, please send him an e-mail at hajessell@tvnewsday.com.