Congressional pressure or pressure from ballot box is needed to s...

office co-dir., expressed concerns about media consolidation that they said were likely to result from several proposed rule changes before FCC, including allowing cross-ownership of newspapers and TV stations and raising the media cross- ownership cap. Kimmelman said rule changes proposed by FCC Chmn. Powell went against intentions of Congress and Supreme Court rulings. Congressional decrees pushed FCC into making rules, he said, and courts had shown that First Amendment concerns elevated media consolidation beyond standard economic issues. “The chairman of the FCC doesn’t see the use for the rules,” Kimmelman said: “But that’s not what Congress believes.” He said recent announcement that Senate Commerce Committee would review merger review agreement between FTC and Justice Dept. (DoJ), which gave DoJ review authority over media mergers, showed Capitol Hill still was willing to scrutinize media merger issues. Cooper compared recent population trends with media ownership and said ownership rules are more necessary than ever despite Powell’s argument more TV channels and Internet access make ownership rules ineffective. Cooper said since the population has become more diverse, but TV programming hasn’t necessarily followed suite, a more diverse media ownership structure is more relevant now than in the 1970s when ownership rules were first enacted. “We need the rules more than ever,” Cooper said. “In fact, we need more rules, not fewer.” Relaxation of rules would create a “merger wave,” Cooper said. “If you let them, they will merge,” he said. Total ownership of TV and newspapers already had dropped to 600 now from 1,500 in 1965 and Cooper said it would fall to 400 if TV-newspaper cross-ownership were allowed. He said 6 companies, ABC, AOL, AT&T-Liberty, CBS, NBC and Fox already controlled nearly 2/3 of all TV. Cooper said Internet shouldn’t be treated as mass media because its reach was much more limited than many believed, adding that 57% of people in country didn’t have Internet in home while only 2% didn’t have TV. Cooper said high-speed Internet access service was highly concentrated market, leaving little room for competition. He said 50% of Internet content came from 4 companies.