Congresswoman Diane Waston believes that we are standing at a crossroads to the future of US media. Will we allow a powerful media lobby in Washington to continue to encourage consolidation of ownership, or will Americans rise up to demand a media system that fosters more local, diverse and democratic media?

LOS ANGELES, September 2004 -- It was not a complete surprise to me that, when the FCC voted to relax its media cross-ownership rules last June, my office received over 1,100 individual letters and calls from my constituents on the issue. Just about every single one of them opposed the FCC's decision.

For the past two years, I have been working with my congressional colleagues to overturn the FCC's media ownership rules with legislation that would bar the FCC from implementing its new rules outright or restrict its funding from carrying out the rules.

While our efforts, backed by over 200 members of Congress from both sides of the political aisle, have been unilaterally ignored by the Republican leadership in the House, the new ownership rules were remanded by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in June.

The Court's decision was a great triumph for localism, competition, and diversity in America's media. It was also a reflection of the people's will, since an unprecedented two million people contacted the FCC to register their opposition to the rules and a clear majority in the House and Senate opposed the rules as well. However, the court's action merely signals a new beginning in the fight for greater diversity in media and ownership reform. Already, some media companies are trying to undermine the court's decision.

For example, just this month, the same Federal Appeals Court that remanded the FCC's new rules rejected Tribune Company's efforts to lift a ban keeping it from buying TV stations and newspapers in the same big-city markets. Keeping in mind that the Tribune Co. already owns The Los Angeles Times and KTLA-TV Channel 5 in my hometown of Los Angeles and other newspapers such as Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant, as well as numerous TV stations in the Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Hartford, Connecticut areas, the tireless attempt to overturn existing ownership rules is extremely troubling.

At the Crossroads

More importantly, the case illustrated that media consolidation will continue to dominate the FCC's agenda next year, and our struggle for greater media reform will greatly influence the democratic discourse of this nation and the lively exchange of ideas in a free, open, and accessible forum.

I believe we are at a dramatic crossroad in the fight for greater media diversity. Today, decades of irresponsible deregulation in telecommunication policy has created great discontent among consumers who are angry at the lack of choices among an extremely concentrated media market.

For example, the public outcry over the past year regarding the issue of indecency in television programming demonstrated that people are truly turned off by a dumb-down media culture that has failed to serve the public interest.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act cleared the way for relaxing media ownership limits. Since then, complaints received by the FCC regarding indecent programing on television have jumped from 26 in 2000 to 217 in 2003. Clear Channel Communications Inc., the nation's largest radio chain with 1,250 stations, or 11 percent of nation's total stations, has received about 52 percent of the fines the FCC has imposed. Viacom's infinity stations, about 2 percent of all stations, has received 28 percent of the FCC's fines. These statistics illustrate a consolidated media market controlled by profit-driven conglomerates that are producing indecent, shock-value programming for the sake of viewer-ship.

Eliminating Choice and Racing to the Bottom

When big media get larger, and the race for audiences turns to the lowest denominator in trash programming as an appeal to the broadest possible audience, these conglomerates move further away from quality programming and the principles of diversity, localism, and competition, which is crucial to serving the public interest.

Furthermore, the public is frustrated by the ever-increasing price of pre-packaged cable programming. They want choices in the selection of cable channels that they receive and subsidize. That is why both Congress and the FCC are closely examining the issue of a la carte cable programming. Today, more than 80 percent of the 91 major cable television networks are owned or co-owned by six media conglomerates. The existing cable and satellite programming packages are inherently anti-competitive, since the types of bundles cable subscribers receive are loaded with extra channels demanded by media conglomerates or cable operators, not consumers.

Thus, the public is forced to subsidize many television programming that an individual may never watch, or even find offensive. Many independent programmers and start-up channels, among them religious broadcasters, are denied the opportunity for carriage because of the anti-competitive structure of the cable market.

At the same time, because of the opportunities afforded by innovations in telecommunication technology, such as the transition from analog to digital broadcasting for network television and the rapid deployment of broadband internet access, the very means by which we exchange information and ideas will be greatly transformed. The decisions that we make, as policy makers and consumers, will have tremendous impact on the future of democratic expression, with the potential to greatly strengthen and revitalize our democratic expression through new forms of civic discourse.

The Dawn of Digital

As you know, the Reagan years led to the end of the fairness doctrine in 1987 that required radio and TV stations to provide balanced news coverage. Then the 1996 Telecommunications Act ushered in a new era of media mergers and consolidations.

Today, five giant media conglomerates, among them Viacom/CBC, GE/NBC, Disney/ABC, News Corp./FOX, and Time Warner, control approximately a 75 percent share of broadcast and cable prime-time viewing. Despite this high level of media concentration, the onset of new technology, especially the transition from analog to digital television, offers us an unprecedented opportunity to demand greater level of public interest service from our broadcasters and to fundamentally transform the media landscape.

In 1996, Congress granted television stations second channels for digital signal service in return for their promise to surrender the portion of the broadcast spectrum on which analog signals operate. The analog spectrum is worth an estimated $70 billion. By law, broadcasters must do their part to promote civic participation and in a manner that enhances our democracy and culture. The public interest also requires that broadcasters air programming that serve the educational needs of children, conforms with the Americans with Disabilities Act, addresses under-served communities, and generally promotes local and community programming.

Soon, local digital broadcast stations will be able to transmit up to six separate channels of digital programming in place of their single current analog channel. While some local stations have already started broadcasting additional digital channels, I believe the transition should be completed as soon as possible.

Putting the Public Interest First

In the mean time, the FCC needs to define meaningful public interest requirements for broadcasters during the digital age so that this generous grant of spectrum will benefit not only broadcasters, but our national and local communities as well.

Last month, I sent a letter to FCC Chairman Powell, along with more than 30 other bi-partisan members of Congress, asking the Commission to start defining broadcasters public interest obligations as soon as possible.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Ms. Gloria Tristani (former FCC Commissioner and current Director of the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ) and other public interest groups, the Commission updated children's programming rules by requiring television stations to air up to 18 hours of Children's shows a week on digital television channels.

The new rule, which will be fully released soon and effective next year, is a step in the right direction, and we need to do much more.

MORA 2004: Unraveling the Conglomerates

Recently, Representative Maurice Hinchey and I have introduced H.R. 4069, the Media Ownership Reform Act of 2004, which seeks to undo the massive consolidation of the media that has been ongoing for nearly 20 years, and writing into statute precise limitations to a company's ability to own and operate media outlets in a single market.

Among its many provisions, the bill would restore the Fairness Doctrine, reinstate a national cap on ownership of radio stations, and lower the number of radio stations one company can own in a local market. It would also keep in place the current cross ownership rules regarding newspaper and broadcast ownership, local TV ownership rules, and prohibit one company from owning a TV station and a cable system in the same local market.

Our bill also sets up new media ownership guidelines for the FCC to use in future rulings, especially in gauging the level of diversity in the nation's media to measure how many people are watching television programming. We will be reintroducing this important piece of legislation next year, and I hope to have your support as we continue the struggle for media ownership reform.

Democracy of the Airwaves

Looking forward, I believe we must work together and establish a new vision of broadcaster's obligation for public interest services. In addition to establishing a new set of public interest obligations for digital broadcasters, the FCC should reinstate a Red Flag ruling that would notify the public about acquisition of radio and television stations that could lead to high levels of ownership concentration. I believe Congress should look into rewriting the 1996 Telecommunication Act to better define the principles of competition, localism, and diversity.

I believe we must preserve fair use of creative products while protecting the creators intellectual property rights, and I believe Congress should adopt policies that would promote independent programming and consumer choice in cable television. These are broad principles that would require years to implement, but we must start now, before the transition to digital television is complete and the opportunity is still presented to us to map out a new era for public interest services in media.

I urge everyone to remain vigilant, as I will join my colleagues to closely monitor the developments at the FCC and push for more action from Congress. We need to remember again that this is not only a struggle against media consolidation, but also a fight for freedom and democracy in our nation's airwaves.

-- Congresswoman Diane E. Watson was born in Los Angeles and is a lifetime resident of the 33rd California Congressional District. This article is excerpted from a Speech Congresswoman Watson delivered earlier this month at the United Church of Christ Legislative Breakfast.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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