Commentary: Hooray for the Parents Television Council

Winter glanced at his fellow panelists at the event, all liberal-minded representatives from the big entertainment content associations—the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Producers Guild, the Recording Artists' Coalition, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).

"What's wrong with this picture?" he asked rhetorically. "The answer is nothing is wrong with this picture. All of us are here to express our thoughts and concerns about the effect of media consolidation, particularly as it relates to programming."

With that, Winter let it rip.

"From where I sit," he said, "media consolidation has dealt a devastating blow" to television programming. The former MGM executive cited a May 2003 PTC study of 100 TV stations operated and owned by one of the four major networks. Only once did any of those stations, citing decency concerns, hold back on a network broadcast.

"And one station general manager admitted that the network, not the station, made her programming decisions," the PTC's Executive Director continued. "When local programming decisions are prohibited by a remote corporate parent, the public interest is not served."

As for the V-Chip, Winter offered appropriate skepticism. The technology depends upon ratings that are provided by the networks themselves, he noted, "so the networks face a financial conflict-of-interest to rate programs accurately. The result is that the networks rate a program inaccurately and they keep the advertisers' money."

Readers of LLFCC will rarely encounter expressions of agreement with the PTC on these Web pages. Surely cultural critic Camille Paglia's term "nanny state" applies to the kind of Federal government the group would foist upon this country, obsessively classifying TV shows as does the Council on its Web site.

The Simpsons, one PTC page advises, "has been known to feature objectionable content especially in the categories of sex and religion. For instance, in the premier episode of the '05 season, Homer allows the mafia to film a pornographic movie in the Simpson home. There are no graphic depictions of sex in the scene, but there is talk of lesbian pornography."

Americans may passionately disagree on what constitutes "objectionable" content in this day and age. But plenty of them agree that they don't want the FCC to resolve the matter, invoking a vague notion of "community standards" that more likely means a community in Salt Lake City, Utah than a community in Santa Cruz, California.

But no one can argue with the PTC's contention that media consolidation will, and already has, significantly damaged the capacity of locally based media to decide for themselves what represents appropriate content for their regional audiences.

Before former chairperson Michael Powell's FCC started shoving its ownership studies under the rug, it publicly released two reports that indicated the alarming extent that, since the passage of the 1996 Telecom Act, radio station ownership and advertising revenue had concentrated in fewer hands, leading to the broadcast of more "non-programming materials"—otherwise known as commercials.

There was one thing wrong with the picture that Tim Winter described in his opening statement, however. The PTC was the only conservative, anti-media consolidation organization represented on the panel.

Everyone knows that prominent conservatives oppose the relaxation of the FCC's media ownership rules.

In January of 2003, just before the FCC approved its now judicially rejected media consolidation guidelines, columnist William Safire inveighed against the move.

"My conservative economic religion is founded on the rock of competition," Safire wrote for The New York Times, "which - since Teddy Roosevelt's day - has protected small business and consumers against predatory pricing leading to market monopolization . . . "

Following Safire's comments, the National Rifle Association sent out a "Media Monopoly Alert" urging them to oppose media consolidation.

"[Y]ou better believe that if these Big Media executives get the control they want over over America's radio and T.V. airwaves," NRA Vice President Waynee LaPierre wrote to the troops, "it will be all but impossible for your NRA to fight our grassroots battles in the way we have done so successfully in the past - by putting your message on the air, telling your fellow citizens the truth, and getting them involved."

Where are these voices now? Are the issues any less urgent?

LLFCC applauds Tim Winter for coming forward and making the Parents Television Council's case against big media. The least his conservative colleagues can do is join Winter at the picnic, that he might feel less like a skunk.

More stories:

• Inside the FCC's "deep-sixed" localism paper