Martin Pushing Further Media Deregulation
The FCC should further deregulate media ownership in light of competition that traditional outlets face from newer technologies, former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday in one of his first public appearances since leaving the agency Jan. 20. He told a Quello Center symposium that the 2007 commission order (CD Dec 19 p1/07) approved by a 3-2 vote letting a company in some cases own a radio or TV station in the same city as a daily newspaper was a good start. Another panelist said media industry concentration isn’t very high, while an antitrust lawyer said newspapers shouldn’t get antitrust exemptions so they can compete with online news.
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Martin gave no hint on the panel or in a brief interview of his career plans, only saying that he’s still employed at the Aspen Institute (CD Jan 22 p2) and declining to say what he’s working on there. “You've seen the newspaper industry continue to deteriorate,” he told us, highlighting the need to for the FCC to have relaxed cross-ownership rules. “We should at least agree that the 2007 order was the right approach,” Martin said. There should also be agreement that the rule, which he noted now is in court, was a “step” that’s “at least in the right direction,” he said. Martin declined to say what further commission action he'd like to see on media ownership.
The FCC “needs to come to change some of its rules” to reflect “changes in the media landscape,” Martin told the gathering. Any potential modifications are “not without controversy,” but shrinking ad revenue and other challenges “demand” the FCC take another look, he added. “You've got a tension today that I think is going to unfold” as some want increased public-interest obligations for broadcasters (CD May 15 p1), he said. “That tension will continue to come to the fore” in “an industry already under financial duress,” he predicted. Current FCC rules allow to some extent for newer services including mobile broadcasting or subscription-based services, he noted.
Although concentration in the media industry has increased slightly in recent years, there’s no monopoly as some such as Stanford University Professor Larry Lessig have contended, said Eli Noam of Columbia University. The top- three U.S. media companies have a total market share of about 15 percent, Noam said. That’s not to say media consolidation is “not a problem,” but the industry hasn’t met the threshold of “highly concentrated,” he added. Viacom is among the exceptions in media and technology, with a share of about 85 percent of the cable music video market, Noam said.
Predictions the Obama administration will significantly change antitrust policy to tilt more against mergers are unlikely to come to fruition, Noam said, because the Supreme Court and other courts would have to reverse themselves for that to occur. Antitrust lawyer Allen Grunes agreed: “I wouldn’t hold out great hopes that because you have a new administration it’s going to dramatically depart from the last administration.”
Among the “wrong solutions” to plunging newspaper revenue amid stiffer online competition is for antitrust exemptions or “price fixing” so the industry can collaborate on charging for Web access to stories, Grunes said. “If anything,” stronger, not weaker, antitrust protection is needed, he added. “There’s a need for some bold new thinking. We've got to get away from ‘let’s relax cross- ownership.'”