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Media consolidation is bad for the left and the right. Corporate speech isn't free. Even that bible of leftism, The Wall Street Journal, is making noise about the big badness of the FCC's probable vote today in favor of further media consolidation. From today's column by Joe Flint (subscribers only):

Last month, Viacom President Mel Karmazin told the Senate Commerce Committee that network television is "not a very good business." A few weeks later, Viacom's CBS sold $2 billion in commercials to advertisers wanting to buy time on the network's fall schedule.

The record $9 billion that Viacom and the other broadcast networks took in last month in ad sales for the coming television season doesn't appear to have swayed the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected to approve further deregulation of the industry on Monday. The rollback of those rules not only will further pad the coffers of entertainment conglomerates; it also likely will lead to more homogenized television programming.

Network television executives and big broadcasters long have complained that regulators have tied their hands, and crimped their profits, by restricting the number of stations they can own. Those restrictions, they contend, have become obsolete in the age of cable and the Internet. And it's true that the broadcast networks face much greater competition than they did 20 years ago. Much of that competition, however, is owned by the very same broadcasters pushing for more deregulation.

Currently, broadcasters are allowed to own stations that reach no more than 35% of television households. If the measure before the FCC passes on Monday as expected, that limit will be eased to 45%. Rules that made it difficult for one company to own more than one television station in a city also are set to be relaxed. Under the revised guidelines, some companies will be able to own up to three television stations in big cities like Los Angeles and New York.

As big broadcasters expand their reach, the remaining smaller production companies willing to take risks in programming are likely to be squeezed out. That's because it's easier for conglomerates to make money by carrying programs they own themselves.

By owning two or more stations in a market, big broadcasters also will have more incentive to cut back on news operations. Although broadcasters tend to boast that such combinations mean more local news programming, they often lead to having reporters use the same material for two stations instead of one.

Ten years ago, the FCC began to ease longstanding rules that prohibited the broadcast networks from owning the shows they aired. With the barriers to vertical integration discarded, the networks often muscled out the middleman -- independent producers -- in favor of shows the networks could own, and profit from, outright. The impact has been undeniable: A decade ago, less than 20% of prime-time programming was owned by the networks. Today, that figure is close to 80%.

With no safeguards in place, networks are apt to favor shows they own over better ones owned by someone else. Already, independent production companies have gone the way of the horse and buggy. If pioneering television producer Norman Lear were to pitch "All in the Family" today, he would have to recast the entire show and turn over ownership to a network before it would have a chance to get on the air.

Radio has undergone a similar transformation. There, a handful of companies dominate the industry, generating stations and playlists that are virtually indistinguishable from one another across the country.

In making the case for deregulation, companies such as Mr. Karmazin's Viacom and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. usually point to the explosion of media outlets, both in cable and the Internet, as evidence that the current restrictions are outdated. But these companies, along with AOL Time Warner, NBC parent General Electric and ABC parent Walt Disney, control some of the biggest and most successful cable networks, and have a big Internet presence as well. Aside from CBS, Viacom's holdings include MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Black Entertainment Television, Comedy Central and radio giant Infinity Broadcasting. AOL Time Warner, for its part, owns CNN, HBO, the WB Network, TNT, as well as cable systems reaching more than 10 million homes. Disney owns ABC, ESPN, the Disney Channel and has stakes in several other big cable networks, including Lifetime and A&E. NBC owns CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Telemundo ... you get the idea.

In moving to ease ownership restrictions, regulators are traveling a slippery slope. Already, the government is poised to approve News Corp.'s proposed takeover of satellite company DirecTV, a deal that would give the biggest owner of television stations in the country even more power in negotiating with the entertainment industry's few remaining independent suppliers of programming.

In his testimony before the committee, Tom Fontana, who created the groundbreaking dramas "Homicide" and "Oz" (for production companies, he noted, that no longer exist), he said that "sometimes by deregulating a big business, you can choke the life of a small one. And with that you lose energy, imagination and entrepreneurial spirit of that small business." Energy, imagination and entrepreneurial spirit -- everything that seems to be missing from television these days.

Energy, imagination and entrepreneurial spirit are just three of the things being choked out of existence by FCC Chairman Michael Powell and his two fellow Republican commissioners. Cultural diversity, artistic risk-taking and all stories of local interest will also disappear as a thin gruel of homogenized corporate spittle, determined by a vanishingly smaller group of people, dominate the landscape of news and entertainment.

Today is the last chance for you to tell the FCC what you think prior to the vote. Stop the FCC!

Lisa at RuminateThis has offered some of the most comprehensive coverage and commentary on this issue. See her many posts there.

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