FCC Fading into Irrelevancy

A fun news item for free-marketers who enjoy watching technology make government regulation (and justification for regulation) obsolete: Today's Washington Post reports that the Internet has so altered media conglomerates' business models as to make the Federal Communications Commission's broadcast media ownership limits irrelevant.

Few people know that the FCC has strict rules limiting broadcast media firms' ownership of various outlets in both local and national markets. A firm that owns TV stations is barred from owning enough stations to broadcast to a majority of the U.S. population, and a firm that owns the largest newspaper in a local market cannot also own the most-watched TV station in that market.

Michael Powell's FCC tried to relax those rules in 2003, and with good reason. But the courts and Congress stamped out that effort. As the WP explains, media firms have subsequently taken a second look at Internet communications, shaking off Time Warner's bad experience with AOL and Disney's with the go.com network.

The result? According to the WP, media firms are finding so many profitable outlets on the Internet that they're hardly interested in Congress's and the FCC's new receptiveness to the idea of relaxing the ownership rules.