Copps, Adelstein Fires Off Memo to FCC

[a kennedy]

Known at the Federal Communications Commission as contrarians, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein late Tuesday fired an elephant gun at the Commission. The Democratic duo are out of sorts because the Commission released 10 voluminous research studies on media ownership that have been boiling away on the academia stoves since late last year and contain a plethora of observations, insight and analysis on all aspects of the complicated media landscape, yet comments are due by Oct. 1, in just 60 days.

"Just when we hoped an open media-ownership process was developing here at
the FCC, along comes this bucket of ice water," the pair said in a joint statement. "These are 10 supposedly serious studies put together by teams of economists and analysts over an eight-month period. One study alone contains over 13 million data points. Yet the Commission expects the public to analyze all 10 studies, and reams of underlying data, and file comments 60 days from today! This is unfair, unnecessary, and ultimately unwise -- inviting public, congressional and judicial outrage reminiscent of what happened when the FCC tried to loosen media-ownership rules four years ago."

Some of the studies released are: The Effects of Cross-Ownership on the Local Content and Political Slant of Local Television News, authored by Jeffrey Milyo of the Center for Applied Economics at the University of Kansas, School of Business; Review of the Radio Industry, 2007, by the FCC's George Williams, an update of a study done during the FCC's last review of the media-ownership rules; Station Ownership and Programming in Radio; How People Get News and Information; Ownership Structure and Robustness of Media; Television Station Ownership Structure and the Quantity and Quality of TV Programming; News Operations.

Any review of the studies will require thinking caps.

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