Consolidation/Smut Connection Asserted

The Center for Creative Voices in Media's Executive Director Jonathan Rintels and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps are getting together Sept. 8 at the Press Club in Washington to unveil a report the center says  "offers compelling evidence of a link between media consolidation and indecency."

Given that assertion, the question mark in the report's title "Ownership Concentration and Indecency in Broadcasting: Is there a Link?" seems unnecessary.

Copps, media scholars and watchdog groups will "explore [the] connection" at the Thursday press conference.

The FCC is preparing to consider how to rewrite its deregulatory media ownership rules to please a Philadelphia appeals court that said the commission had not sufficiently justified them. It is also faced with petitions to reconsider its decisions that the F-word and the revelation of Janet Jackson's partially-obscured breast are indecent.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.