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July 22, 2013 OTHER VOICES

Cross-ownership fails so Tribune grabs more TV

Chris Powell
By Chris Powell

Thirteen years after buying Times Mirror Co. and combining television stations and newspapers in the same markets in violation of federal anti-monopoly regulations, Tribune Co. recently formally called off the scheme. The businesses will be separated into two companies. The newspaper company then is to be sold as a unit or part by part, leaving Tribune entirely a TV broadcaster.

But the TV stations and newspapers are finally being separated not to comply with those regulations, which Tribune and other big media companies nearly persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to repeal when it had a Republican majority. No, the businesses are being separated because the newspaper business is ailing and combining TV stations with newspapers in the same markets now is considered a failure financially.

Such combinations were advocated as a way of strengthening news organizations amid increasing competition from new information-delivery systems. But since the airwaves can be used only with government grants of exclusivity and not every news organization can have a TV station, allowing common ownership of newspapers and TV stations penalizes their competitors, as government determines winners and losers on a patronage basis.

This unfairness was extreme in Connecticut, where the state's largest newspaper, the Hartford Courant, was allowed to combine with Tribune's two Connecticut television stations — WTIC-TV61 and WCCT-TV20. Meanwhile no other newspapers in the state were permitted to operate even one TV station.

The FCC gave Tribune 13 years of “temporary” waivers while the regulations against cross-ownership were supposedly being reconsidered. For 13 years, Tribune has been exempted from the rules that have continued to apply to everyone else.

While Tribune has failed with cross ownership, the company is succeeding in diminishing media competition on a much broader front. Just a few days before announcing the separation of its TV stations and newspapers, Tribune acquired the 19 stations of Local TV Holdings LLC for $2.73 billion, making Tribune the largest broadcast company in the country, with 42 stations covering most big markets.

Tribune assumes the FCC will approve routinely the transfer of the broadcast licenses involved even as the commission is supposed to encourage diversity of ownership in the news media.

The big but largely unspoken questions here remain why any company should be allowed to hold more than one or two broadcast licenses and why there shouldn't be hundreds of TV station owners instead of just a few big ones like Tribune.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.

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