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He's back! Safire back on the broadcast beat

New York Times columnist William Safire, one of many notable conservative voices which found great fault with the FCC's 6/2/03 media ownership ruling, took the occasion of the Comcast/ABC story to get back on his high horse, turning both of his rhetorical six-guns on our industry. The proposed merger? He's against it, of course.

Safire has the media world boiled down to six companies already - - (1) Viacom/CBS, (2) News Corp./Fox/DirecTV, (3) GE/NBC/Universal, (4) Time-Warner/AOL/CNN, (5) Disney/ABC and (6) Comcast.

The Comcast proposal, if it ever actually happens, would take it down to five. Safire speculates that News Corp. and Microsoft will whittle the number down to three in relatively short order.

Here's Safire's take on FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Speaking of his appearance last week before the Senate Commerce Committee, Safire wrote that Powell was "...currying favor with cultural conservatives by pretending to be outraged over Janet Jackson's 'costume reveal.'" He earlier in the article called Powell, "The Horatius lollygagging at the bridge..," and said he "never met a merger he didn't like." Safire believes that despite Powell's promise of 'ruthless and rigorous scrutiny," that he'd probably wave this one through in the end.

Safire had a few words for Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ), calling him a "...senatorial apostle of deregulation..."

RBR observation:

Maybe Safire is thinking back to times long ago regarding McCain as a scion of dereg. However, if we limit our consideration to the FCC ruling at hand, that of 6/2/03, then he has McCain all wrong. McCain was been an immediate and forceful foe of the FCC ruling.

McCain personally introduced amendments to the Stevens-Hollings bill which modestly attacked only one aspect of the FCC ruling, the new 45% TV audience reach cap. McCain supported the addition language to reinstate crossownership restrictions, among other things. He also proposed the fairly radical step of eliminating grandfathering under the FCC's new Arbitron-based radio market definition.

Shortly thereafter, in his FCC Reauthorization Bill, he changed language in the 1996 Telecom Act which was believed to cause the DC Circuit to interpret a deregulatory mandate, giving the FCC 360-degree freedom of regulatory movement. In other words, if the situation warrants, in the agency's expert opinion, it can increase regulation, under the McCain wording.

Bottom line: In this instance, calling McCain an "apostle of deregulation" is simply incorrect.

Next month's Disney shareholders meeting in Philly, 01/28/04 RBR #20, should be quite a show. Roy Disney is hosting an anti-Eisner meeting the night before to rally the troops for the big "no" vote. He hasn't taken a position one way or the other on the Comcast bid, but the pending hostile takeover bid has certainly given a boost to his effort to oust Eisner. We wonder what will happen next as this soap opera progresses.