The vote, as expected, went along party lines with the three Republican members of the commission voting in favour and Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the Democrat members, voicing strong opposition while voting against the regulations.
While expected, the vote will be greeted with alarm in the US Senate and Congress by both sides of the house. Senator Fritz Hollings, a Democrat, called the decision "dumb and dangerous", while former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, Republican, said he thought most Republicans in Congress would oppose some of the more controversial changes.
The first rule to be changed lifts the limit of the national audience a broadcaster can reach to 45%, up from 35%. This will benefit Viacom, which owns CBS and UPN, and News Corp, which owns Fox, because mergers have already given them a market share above the 35% ceiling limit.
A rule preventing mergers by the four major TV networks -- NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox -- remains in place. However, the ban preventing a newspaper owner controlling a TV or radio station in the same market is to be removed except in the smallest markets.
FCC chairman Michael Powell, son of secretary of state Colin Powell, said that the FCC's decision aims to update regulations while ensuring that no single company can dominate the US media industry.
He said that the committee had been working over the last 20 months to achieve three important goals.
The first of these, he said, was to reinstate "legally enforceable broadcast ownership limits that promote diversity, localism and competition".
The second goal focused on the changing media landscape, taking into account the explosion in digital. Powell said that modern rules were needed to take "proper account of the explosion of new media outlets for news, information and entertainment", rather than perpetuate the greying rules of a bygone black and white era.
The last area of attention he said was to strike a balance between public and commercial interest "that does not limit transactions that promote the public interest, while ensuring that no company can monopolise the medium".
The rule changes have deeply divided parts of American society, with fears being expressed that a smaller and smaller group of media owners was controlling what Americans what and read.
Addressing these concerns, Powell said that the FCC had left rules in place to prevent "excessive consolidation".
"Though such generalised worries do not clearly suggest specific answers to the specific issues the commission must address, they have introduced a note of caution in the choices we have made. Consequently, our decisions today -- retaining the rule against networks merging, tightening the limits on radio ownership, and modifying, rather than eliminating, the remaining rules -- are modest, albeit very significant changes," Powell said.
However, Powell said that "keeping the rules exactly as they are, as some so stridently suggest, was not a viable option".
If you have an opinion on this or any other issue raised on Brand Republic, join the debate in the .
.jpg)
.jpg)