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F.C.C. Shift May Thwart a Murdoch Media Deal [ see below ]

[ Media Monopoly Should Scare the Hell out of President Obama ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIP9SUxh0xA

published: 30 Nov 2012 - views: 1940

Unsatisfied with his media empire in the UK and Australia and his several media holdings in the United States like The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News, Rupert Murdoch wants more. The only thing standing in Murdoch's way of full-spectrum media domination in America are Federal Communication Commission rules that forbid one company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in one community. Murdoch already owns local television stations in both Chicago and Los Angeles. But according to sources within the FCC, Chairman Julius Genachowski is quietly planning to scrap those rules. Under pressure from major media moguls like Murdoch, who see big bucks and huge political power in a consolidated national and local media, Genachowski circulated a new order to other FCC Commissioners that would allow for cross-ownership of TV and newspapers in the nation's twenty biggest media markets. Today, only five corporations - one of which is Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp - own the majority of all the media seen, read, or listened to by Americans. If the FCC gets completely out of the way, then further consolidation will follow suit. Which is a huge problem for democracy. If there's one monopoly that's more dangerous than all of the others, it's a media monopoly.

http://article.wn.com/view/2013/03/25/FCC_Shift_May_Thwart_a_Murdoch_Media_Deal/#/video

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F.C.C. Shift May Thwart a Murdoch Media Deal

By AMY CHOZICK - Published: March 24, 2013

In weighing a bid for The Los Angeles Times, Rupert Murdoch .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/rupert_murdoch/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. finds himself in a familiar role: waiting for rule changes from the government. With the resignation last week of Julius Genachowski .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/julius_genachowski/index.html?inline=nyt-per , the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_communications_commission/index.html?inline=nyt-org , he may have to wait a little longer.


Josh Reynolds/Associated Press

Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation is weighing whether a bid for The Los Angeles Times would be worth the headache.

Mr. Murdoch, who has never shied away from a regulatory battle, has been beefing up News Corporation’s .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/news_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org .. lobbying efforts in Washington in the last few months to urge regulators to revise a media ownership rule that would prevent the company from acquiring The Los Angeles Times and other newspapers in markets in which it already owns television stations.

“He wants it,” one person close to Mr. Murdoch said of The Los Angeles Times.

“They’re working on getting a waiver now,” added this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks. But another person close to Mr. Murdoch said he currently considered a potential deal more trouble than it is worth given the regulatory hurdles in Washington.

The resignation of Mr. Genachowski, a Democrat, could further stall a plan favored by the departing chairman that would relax a longtime ban on consolidation between television stations and newspapers in local markets. The F.C.C. signaled on Friday that a vote on easing media ownership rules would move forward despite Mr. Genachowski’s departure.

Initially expected to be presented for a vote early this year, the measure has already faced several setbacks. Last month, Mr. Genachowski said there would be no vote until the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council .. http://mmtconline.org/ , a Washington-based nonprofit, completed a study of the impact of cross-ownership on news gathering. That process could take several weeks, potentially pushing a vote to the summer.

In a series of letters sent to the F.C.C. late last year, Maureen A. O’Connell, News Corporation’s senior vice president for regulatory and government affairs, and Jared S. Sher, a vice president and associate general counsel at the company, argued that regulators should dissolve the cross-ownership rule. “There can be little debate today that the newspaper industry faces existential threats,” Ms. O’Connell wrote in a Dec. 7 letter .. http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7022075866 .. documenting a meeting with agency officials. “We urged the F.C.C. to eliminate the cross-ownership rule as a relic from a bygone era.”

Any easing of the media ownership rule would face fierce opposition from groups that say too much consolidation threatens a free press. If Mr. Murdoch owned a major Hollywood studio and a newspaper known as the paper of record for the entertainment industry, it could spark additional skepticism.

Mr. Murdoch has given mixed signals about his interest in The Los Angeles Times, which is being put on the market by the Tribune Company, along with its other seven newspapers. A longtime reader of the paper, Mr. Murdoch is weighing whether a bid would be worth the headache and regulatory battles, said several people close to him who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. (The Tribune Company has indicated that it may prefer to sell its newspapers as a bundle.)

Under the Obama administration, Mr. Murdoch has lost some of his muscle in Washington. Even Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, considered a Murdoch ally, recently supported shelving the Stop Online Piracy Act, which News Corporation and other media companies had lobbied to pass.

“It won’t get through with the Democratic administration in place,” Mr. Murdoch told a Los Angeles Times reporter .. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/14/entertainment/la-et-ct-rupert-murdoch-la-times-20130114 .. when asked at the Golden Globes .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/golden_globes_awards/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier .. in January whether he wanted to buy the paper.

This summer, News Corporation will separate its newspapers .. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/news-corporation-makes-it-official-two-companies/ .. into a smaller, mostly publishing-based company. Even if regulators were to grant a waiver of the cross-ownership rule, The Los Angeles Times would need significant investment that could strain the new company, said one of the people close to Mr. Murdoch.

News Corporation spent $6.3 million on lobbying last year, working mostly with the Washington firms Fritts Group, Glover Park Group, Cormac Group and Quinn Gillespie & Associates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A spokeswoman for News Corporation declined to comment.

Under Mr. Genachowski’s proposal to modify media ownership rules, a company or an individual could own both a television station and a newspaper in the same top-20 market as long as the station was not in the top four in audience size based on Nielsen ratings. News Corporation owns the Los Angeles stations KTTV and KCOP, and KCOP rates between fourth and fifth among local stations.

A spokesman for the F.C.C. has said the proposed rules would make it more difficult to acquire a waiver. “The assertion that the F.C.C.’s order would make it easier for a top-four TV station — or for a TV station that moves between fourth and fifth in the rankings — to acquire a newspaper is simply false,” the spokesman, Justin Cole, said in a statement last month.

Craig Aaron, president and chief executive of Free Press, an advocacy group that supports diverse media ownership, agreed that there was “very little wiggle room” in the current rules. But if the rules change, he said, “the opportunity to obtain a waiver becomes much closer to reality.”

Cross-ownership rules were first put in place in 1975, when the media landscape was drastically different. From Nov. 26 to Dec. 5 last year, officials from News Corporation’s government affairs office met with all five F.C.C. commissioners to discuss cross-ownership and other issues affecting the media industry, according to documents filed with the commission.

The company and many of its competitors have long argued that local television stations and newspapers should be able to share resources. In 1993, after threatening to shut The New York Post, Mr. Murdoch received a permanent waiver from the F.C.C. to own the tabloid and the local television station WNYW.

Ms. O’Connell, a company lobbyist who specializes in the cross-ownership issue, pointed out in News Corporation’s letters to the F.C.C. that The New York Post’s daily circulation declined 42 percent from 2002 to 2011, to less than 345,000.

“In an era of profound distress for the newspaper industry, the commission should embrace the ways in which television stations and newspapers can share resources and realize economic efficiencies,” she wrote.

Analysts said the coming split could help News Corporation’s chances of receiving an F.C.C. waiver, because the Los Angeles stations will be part of the Fox Group, along with the company’s cable assets and Hollywood studio. Mr. Murdoch will be chairman of both companies. In 2014, the Fox Group is expected to have to renew the stations’ licenses with the F.C.C.

“If their TV stations are going to be spun off from the larger conglomerate, then they might be given a waiver on the instance that they won’t directly own newspapers and stations in those particular markets anymore,” said Justin Nielson, an analyst at SNL Kagan.

News Corporation’s publishing company will receive a $2.6 billion infusion of cash and have no debt when it separates from the cable channels, according to documents filed .. http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NWS/1645263386x0xS1193125-13-97263/1308161/1193125-13-97263.pdf .. with the Securities and Exchange Commission. (In 2007, News Corporation paid $5.6 billion for Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. That deal was not subject to F.C.C. cross-ownership rules because The Journal is considered a national newspaper.)

The F.C.C. cannot rule specifically against Mr. Murdoch or News Corporation; it must instead create broad regulations that apply to all media companies. But Mr. Aaron of Free Press said the continuing investigation into phone hacking at the company’s British tabloids would complicate a deal.

“We’re talking about Murdoch owning more newspapers in a year when
people are still being arrested at the News of the World,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 25, 2013, on page B1
of the New York edition with the headline: F.C.C. Shift May Stall Media Deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/business/media/murdochs-appetite-for-los-angeles-times-may-depend-on-fcc-changes.html?ref=juliusgenachowski&_r=0&pagewanted=all