Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps on media consolidation

Former Michael Copps is very worried about media consolidation. Apparently spurred by what Copps calls "the stunning announcement that Comcast hopes to buy Time-Warner … for more than $45 billion" — a merger that he says could "run roughshod over consumers" — Copps has penned this lengthy "Dear Journalists" letter in the Columbia Journalism Review. Here's his intro:

You may wonder why a long-time regulator like me is writing to you. … I worked at the intersection of policy and journalism as a member of the Federal Communications Commission and saw first-hand how my agency’s decisions limited your ability to accomplish good things. Since I stepped down two years ago, the situation has only gotten worse. I want to do something about it. I want you to do something about it, too. Let me tell you what I saw. I was sworn in as a commissioner in 2001. “What an awesome job this is going to be,” I thought, “dealing with edge-of-the-envelope issues, meeting the visionaries and innovators transforming the ways we communicate, and then making it all happen by helping to craft policies to bring the power of communications to every American.” It was a heady time…. New media would complement the traditional media of newspapers, radio, TV, and cable, ushering in a golden age of communications. … The FCC that I joined had a different agenda. It had fallen as madly in love with industry consolidation, as had the swashbuckling captains of big media. The agency seldom met an industry transaction it didn’t approve. The Commission’s blessing not only conferred legitimacy on a particular transaction; it encouraged the next deal, and the hundreds after that. So Clear Channel grew from a 1970s startup to a 1,200-station behemoth. Sinclair, Tribune, and News Corp. went on buying sprees, too, and the major networks extended their influence by buying some stations and affiliating with others. Gone are hundreds of once-independent broadcast outlets. In their stead is a truncated list of nationwide, homogenized, and de-journalized empires that respond more to quarterly reports than to the information needs of citizens.