A sign of the future, as seen by Michael Powell?

Not that Michael Powell will ever see it, or that Mr. Powell will be troubled by it if he does see it, but a story in Monday’s New York Times exemplifies all that is wrong, all that is unnerving, all that is undemocratic, all that is corporate in the FCC regulations that will be ramrodded into place today.

Reported by Jim Rutenberg (with Micheline Maynard), “TV News That Looks Local, Even if It’s Not" discusses a television station in Flint, Michigan (apropos of nothing except linking to his site, that’s Michael Moore‘s hometown) where the firebrand political commentator, Mark Hyman, is actually based in Baltimore suburb Hunt Valley, Maryland, in a studio maintained by the Sinclair Broadcast Group.  The same Mark Hyman, with the same, umm, insights:

“Black, Asian and Hispanic seniors are graduating from colleges this spring in ethnically themed ceremonies that are out of bounds for whites,” Mr. Hyman, the station’s commentator, inveighed. Before passing the camera’s attention back to his colleagues on the Flint news team, he added, “Segregated ceremonies have no place in America’s college campuses."

also turns up as the firebrand political commentator in, among other places, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Oklahoma City, and Raleigh.  Need I mention that in four of the five cities specified in the NYTimes report the TV stations are on the FOX network (Raleigh is either UPN or WB)?

Within the next two months, Sinclair will extend its “Central Casting” (their own term for it, apparently) news operation to another seven markets, including Birmingham (UPN or WB) and Tampa (WB).  Eventually, Sinclair intends to deploy a fleet of such Central Casting reportage throughout their portfolio of television stations.  At present, Sinclair owns 62 stations (20 FOX, 19 WB, 6 UPN, 8 ABC, 3 CBS, 4 NBC, and 2 independents) in 24 states.  According to their corporate site, they currently reach 24% of TV households, so there’s a whole lot of room for growth of their Central Casting model even if Powell doesn’t raise the limit from 35% to 45%.

I’m sure that not all multi-market media corporations will follow the example of Sinclair.  But unless the companies make a concerted effort to resist such homogenization and widespread dissemination of corporate opinion rather than community opinion, the allure of such economies of scale is likely to result in more and more of the same.  This is precisely the sort of scenario that the overwhelming majority of public respondents to the FCC, numerous members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and a few voices in the world of mass media (for some examples, see my May 14 blog entry) don’t want to see in our future.

Not that Michael Powell and his two fellow-travelers on the FCC care about public opinion or Congressional opinion, or anyone’s opinions except those of their political mentors in the White House and their benefactors with the wide-open checkbooks.  The naked and dismissive arrogance of the Bushies, as exemplified by Colin Powell’s son’s little FCC fiefdom, never ceases to amaze and horrify.

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