McDowell's Entrance Tips FCC To Republican Majority

Mediaweek ^ | 6/2/06 | Todd Shields

[LdSentinal]

Robert McDowell was sworn in on June 1 as a member of the Federal Communications Commission, giving Republican Chairman Kevin Martin his first partisan majority since taking office 14 months ago.

McDowell, a telephone association executive until joining the commission, could cast major votes on media ownership and cable carriage rules at his initial FCC monthly meeting, on June 15.

Until June 1, Martin has contended with a commission split 2-to-2 between Democrats and Republicans, and for a few months was even the sole Republican on the agency.

Now, Martin is asking commissioners to reverse last year’s FCC decision limiting broadcasters’ mandatory cable carriage rights to a single digital channel. The chairman also wants to launch a review asking whether to liberalize media ownership rules.

McDowell’s term runs until June 2009.

[new yorker 77]

Anyone that enrages libs is fine by me.

[gondramB]

>>Now, Martin is asking commissioners to reverse last year’s FCC decision limiting broadcasters’ mandatory cable carriage rights to a single digital channel. The chairman also wants to launch a review asking whether to liberalize media ownership rules.<<<

I can't tell - is this more regulation or less regulation?

[bilhosty]

"I can't tell - is this more regulation or less regulation?"

The thing isn't about more or less regulation it is destroying the MSM. For that we will probably need more regulation and I am all for it this time. I think we should limit ownership of stations to local ownership only and that way they can be in the hands of entrpreneurs instead of Journalistic establishment slimebags.

[blondboy76]

The media ownership liberalization this time will be mainly focused on lifting the cross-ownership ban that says the same company can't own a newspaper and TV station in the same city, rather than the limits on numbers of stations a network can own, like in 2003.

One of the biggest stakeholders in the cross-ownership issue is Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox News), and CBS is not a major owner of newspapers, so deregulating this time around may be helpful to our side of the media for once.

[bilhosty]

That is true that Rupert Murdoch's company has cross ownership. It is also true that Mclatchy, New York Times, Tribune co, Washington Post and other real media enemies do have cross owenrship.

I hope that they open up Hollywood studio shows held by the networks to cable and independent stations. That way any hit show that a network has could automatically be carried by an independent station or a cable company thus taking away any reasonfor a network to exist. They can justify it as anti-trust or whatever.