In the 1954 movie Sabrina, Linus Larrabee tells the young Sabrina that dating him until his brother David was well enough was really the same because the charm ran in the family.
Larrabee not only had all the charm of his younger brother but he had a knack for business. The Larrabee family was not only in business of charm but copper, plastics and the raw materials to produce the plastics.
As some might say today, the Larrabees were a monopoly with a variety with holdings in the same fields of production.
Some might even say that the recent Federal Communications Commission decision to loosen regulations on the media gives more power to moguls such as the fictitious Larrabees.
The ruling actually gave more power to the public by allowing these media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch to provide more diverse news.
The Heritage Foundation’s media expert James Gattuso says that the proof of need for the change within the FCC’s rules was during the Iraq war. Gattuso looks to the multiplicity of news coverage during the conflict as proof of a more localized market plus a 24-hour cable news market and the Internet.
FCC rules were outdated and some were made as far back as 1941 to an audience with few media outlets and little technology.
The Nielsen ratings support this claim with their data that television viewers watch cable more now than broadcast networks.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that during the 2001-2002 season that viewers spent 26.5 hours watching cable networks compared to the 24.4 hours for all the broadcast networks affiliates combined. The reason for the sudden change in media ownership rules is because that the media is changing vastly due to Internet and cable.
Also in 1996 the Telecommunications Act was passed which requires the FCC to review all its rules every other year. In addition, much of the past rules were brought before U.S. appeals courts.
Critics say that this change will lead to more news concentration.
This appears to be false as more media mergers in recent years have led to more choices. Choice is exactly what this change will bring, but limits are still on media owners. Areas such as East Tennessee will probably not see any differences locally, but nationally we should see some interesting moves take place.
Here are a few of the changes made in the FCC’s latest decision:
* The Dual Television Network Ban stayed the same. It bans a company from owning more than one of the top four major broadcast networks.
*In Local Television Ownership, markets with five or more TV stations, a company can have two stations but only one of these stations can be among the top four in ratings.
* Markets with more than 11 TV stations are where the most dramatic changes will be seen. Areas such as New York and Atlanta could see many changes in their local media.
*The Cross-Media Limits bans in 1970 and 1975 were lifted. Now newspaper/broadcast and radio/television cross ownerships are based on a formula on the number of outlets in the market.
Viewers will have more of a vote in what they see now that the rules have been loosened.
The best way to vote is to either click the remote “on” or “off” of the programming a given viewer does not like.
Viewership of respective stations and the Nielsen ratings speak to the networks the loudest.

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