Court Sorta Kinda Allows Marginally More Media Cross Ownership

from the yawn dept

Wed, Mar 24th 2010 6:51pm — Mike Masnick

For decades, the US has had certain "media cross-ownership" limits to prevent, for example, a single company from owning both a local broadcast network and a newspaper. These rules came about back when those two were basically the only source one could go to for local news. But, of course, that's not true any more (at all). Instead, you've got local media that is struggling, and perhaps it does make sense for them to not be forced into only playing in a single medium. So, for years the FCC has tried to loosen media ownership rules, leading to complaints from people who still don't seem to recognize that the internet is a pretty big competitor these days with the old media companies. In 2007, the FCC came up with a compromise that very marginally loosened media ownership rules: basically, in just the top 20 media markets, a newspaper could merge with a single radio or TV station but not if that TV station was one of the top 4 in the market. In other words, there was no way this minor loosening of the rules was going to lead to some feared situation of one company dominating the media landscape.

But, still, lots of people protested that suddenly all our news was going to come from Rupert Murdoch, and politicians looked to invalidate the rule while lawsuits were filed. A judge eventually banned putting the rules into effect, but an appeals court has now temporarily lifted the ban. While some are still complaining about this, the impact is likely to be negligible at best. As Editor & Publisher explains:

It's safe to say that Tuesday's Third Circuit action -- which could prove only a temporary lifting of the ban -- won't set off any buying binge among newspapers.

For one thing, nobody is going to lend newspapers money to buy media these days. That lesson's been learned until the next bubble comes around. And even if a newspaper had the jack to swing a deal, there's little point in spending it on the fourth-place -- or worse -- broadcast outlet in town.

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Filed Under: broadcasters, cross ownership, fcc, limits, media ownership, newspapers

8 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2010 @ 7:09pm

What's a newspaper?
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2010 @ 8:47pm

Poor Nbc
They would have gotten all the money "there's little point in spending it on the fourth-place -- or worse -- broadcast outlet in town." that was their bailout plan this whole time
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The Mighty Buzzard, 24 Mar 2010 @ 8:52pm

Re:
Really good fire starting material. Not as cheap as a block of magnesium and flint but almost any convenience store carries newspapers and hardly any carry handy pieces of magnesium.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2010 @ 9:21pm

Re: Re:
Did you know that Newspapers are great for cleaning glass/windows with some glass cleaner like Windex or Glass Plus? They can also be used to make paper airplanes as well and they're good if you have pet birds to put in their bird page or if you paint and want to use them to prevent your floor from getting paint on them.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2010 @ 9:23pm

Re: Re: Re:
Oh, and they can make decent fly swatters too I suppose.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Mar 2010 @ 9:48pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
So the government might have to bail out a fire-burning, glass-cleaning, glorified flyswatter?

I can do all of those things! Where's my money?
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Technopolitical (profile), 25 Mar 2010 @ 3:49am

Cross ownership and Bulk ownership
Here in NYC,,, WCBS-TV news tells its views to catch up on the news on the radio at WINS all-news-radio .

Thing is there is also the all news WCBS-am-radio. Both all news radio stations have the same owner.

The two all news stations in the Big Apple have the same owner !?!? FCC regulations tend to be "random acts of managment".

But as talked about here at TechDirt last week , most print and internet news is wire service stuff anyway. While meanwhile on local radio and TV,,, anything non-local comes from networks -- that often pool their reporters anyway.

The news is most always the same as well ,, only the bylines are changed.

Want to be an informed citizen? Turn off the TV and Radio , burn the newspaer in the fireplace , and then use the internet to research out the issues for yourself from sites that do original reporting.
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Hephaestus (profile), 25 Mar 2010 @ 8:44am

LOL ....
"won't set off any buying binge among newspapers."

That is something I really agree with. There should be a toxic asset of newspapers.
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