FCC Set to Modernize Media Rules (Rep. Joe Barton)

The FCC is poised to eliminate the absolute ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership at its Dec. 18 open meeting. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. As Chairman Martin has rightfully pointed out, when the ban was created in the 1970s, cable served fewer than 15 percent of TV households, and satellite TV and the Internet did not even exist. Today, everyone except 13 percent of TV households subscribe to cable or satellite, and almost one-third of Americans regularly get their news over the Internet.

With all these independent competing sources of news and information, the rationale for the ban – preserving localism and diversity – starts to collapse. In fact, newspapers are so strapped these days that the ban probably hinders localism and diversity. If you come from any of the big newspaper cities in America, you know what I mean. Circulation is down nearly everywhere, so they’re laying off and cutting back. ‘Big Print’ is on a starvation diet, and it’s not so big anymore.

One of the real joys of the Internet age is that people decide where they get information, not editors. Once upon a time, most people had three TV channels – one for each of the networks – and a choice, perhaps, of two or three newspapers. Now they’ve got one local newspaper, hundreds of channels and thousands of Internet sites. The cross-ownership ban is a relic of a past. It should be abolished.