Tuesday October 12, 2004

Media Consolidation Hits Home

Eight years ago, I wrote a story for The Memphis Flyer about the immediate aftermath of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which — among other things — abolished the so-called “rule of twelves,” a law that prohibited any one company from owning more than twelve AM stations, twelve FM stations and twelve TV stations in the U.S. (The rule was already a roll back of the “rule of sevens” which was in effect until 1984.) The 1996 Act passed the Senate 81 to 18, with only one Republican — John McCain — voting against it, eliminating national caps on station ownership altogether. (And, yes, John Kerry voted for it.)

This kicked off the media consolidation we see today. In Memphis, for example, Clear Channel quickly acquired seven radio stations, the ABC television affiliate, operational control over the city’s UPN affiliate and 75 percent of the city’s billboard faces. At the time, critics charged — correctly — that this would lead to higher advertising rates, centralized news operations, less local news and fewer programming choices for listeners and viewers. While it also raised the spectre that a single company could use its media clout to shape public opinion, few took this terribly seriously and the harms of consolidation seemed a little abstract. Until now.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group, as everyone knows by now, has ordered its 62 U.S. television stations — 50 more than it could have legally owned in 1996 — to air an anti-Kerry documentary on the eve of the election. Like I said, such a scenario seemed almost unthinkable eight years ago, when these nascent empires seemed primarily concerned with eliminating redundancy and spinning economies of scale. Now we know better.

For more coverage of Sinclair’s plan to use its government granted media saturation to sway the election, and for some suggestions about what you can do to stop it, see Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo.