FCC media review stops in Richmond
By Bill McConnell -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/3/2003 3:00:00 AM
Dozens of activists -- many donning blue coats in the guise of mad scientists with cardboard televisions framing their heads -- told Federal Communications Commission members visiting Richmond, Va., Thursday that big business already has too much control of the media and they don't want more deregulation of the industry.
"I am worried about the concentration of media ownership into fewer and fewer hands," said Danny LeBlanc, president of the Virginia AFL-CIO, during the agency field hearing. Allen Barrett, Richmond National Association for the Advancement of Colored People president, said consolidation undermines minority ownership.
"Oligopoly in the Fourth Estate is a real threat to diversity and democratic ideals," he said.
Neither LeBlanc nor Barrett posed as mad scientists.
Bear Stearns & Co. analyst Victor Miller disagreed with their complaints and said broadcasters' operating expenses are under enormous pressure from programming costs and competition from consolidating cable operations.
Thomas Herwitz, president of station operations for Fox Television, said efficiencies brought by his company's large size allowed its owned-and-operated stations to increase local news coverage.
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