FCC Ownership Vote Comes Under Fire

In the most sweeping media-deregulation move in decades, the Federal Communications Commission last week freed big companies to get bigger and expand more deeply in most local markets. The agency’s decision may also cast the issue of media regulation from the obscurity of federal procedure into the arena of electoral politics.

Two days after the agency’s 3-to-2 party-line vote to raise TV network ownership limits and loosen restrictions on same-market ownership of newspaper, TV and radio properties, FCC chairman Michael Powell found himself before the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees his agency, where he defended the FCC’s action as “modest” and twice made the point that any one of the big national networks owns less than 3 percent of the nation’s TV stations.