AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, it's now hundreds of thousands
of words
past the WorldCom bankruptcy, with the media might of this great
nation
devoted to explaining it all to you, and there are still six
words I cannot
find anywhere -- the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996.
Don't you
think that's carrying our famously ahistorical journalism a
little too far?
When the cause of a disaster is a mere six years back
in time,
surely even American journalists can dredge up a twinge or two of
memory.
For those of you not afflicted by Alzheimer's in recent years,
Bob
McChesney, the media critic and professor at Southern Illinois,
sums it up
nicely: "The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was one of the most
important of
the last 50 years. It was also the most corrupt and undemocratic
bill of the
time: It was of, by and for special interests. Most of the
congresspeople
who voted for it didn't even know what they were voting on."
He understates. The bill was actually written by
industry
lobbyists, each of the several components of telecom snarling at
one another
like wolves over a piece of meat as they ripped up 70 years worth
of
regulatory experience. The wolves united once the bill hit the
floor to push
it through. We few, we happy few, who raised hell about it at the
time had
it condescendingly explained to us that the magic of the
marketplace would
take care of all our doubts.
Here's what the magic has done in just one area.
Before Reagan,
a radio company could own 12 stations nationally and no more than
two in any
one market. After the first round of de-reg in the '80s, that was
changed to
no more than 28 nationally and no more than four in one market.
The '96 law
changed that to as many as you could acquire nationally and eight
in one
market. The result, we were told, would be increased competition.
Sure.
Since then, almost two-thirds of American radio
stations have
been bought, always by ever-larger entities. Clear Channel owns
1,200
stations nationally and two or three companies (they're always
merging) own
almost all of them. In all the major cities, we are down to a
duopoly or
triopoly in radio.
Here's the result in terms of the great variety, the
let-100-flowers bloom they promised would accompany this
flowering of
competition: Clear Channel moves into a city and rents, say, a
floor of a
building, which is mostly a sales office but also has eight
little closets
for eight radio stations. The Play List is shipped in from
headquarters and
is the same all over the country, for Top 40 or Easy Listening or
country --
we have less and less sense of our localities, of our regional
music, fewer
opportunities for new talent. Actually, they've ruined radio. As
any serious
country fan can tell you, you can't find good music on the radio
anymore.
That's just the radio piece of the bill -- the rest
is even more
horrible, but Sen. Russ Feingold has introduced a bill that would
fix much
of the problem with radio. The '96 bill explicitly deregulated
both radio
and telephone cable. The bill told the Federal Communications
Commission to
deregulate the rest of it. Before the '96 act, the phone
companies were
under the AT&T consent deal of 1984 that said AT&T couldn't do
local service
and the Baby Bells couldn't do long distance. In the '96 season
of piggery,
thuggery, greed and stupidity, we were told that deregulation
would give us
increased competition, prices would drop, service would improve
dramatically.
In '96, there were 12 big companies in the field --
it's now
down to six and dropping like a stone. Prices are up, service is
worse, AND
the '96 act opened the door for precisely the sleazy, rotten
behavior we
have witnessed with Global Crossing and WorldCom. Not just opened
the door,
but invited it in and laid down the red carpet for it.
Now connect the dag-nabbit, bobberty-doggin' dots
here. This is
not a business scandal. WorldCom is not just a corporate failure.
This is
about government. The government of this country has been bought
by campaign
contributions from corporate special interests. This is about the
nexus
between big corporations and government, the American keiretsu,
the
Establishment.
From Washington, we hear nothing but petty,
provincial yapping
over whether this hurts the R's or the D's. The R's blame it all
on Bill
Clinton, the D's blame it all on the greedhead Republican
Congress. But this
is about much more than the next election, or the one after
that.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
of their
country. Because if we don't, it's going to get worse. The FCC is
now
chaired by the anti-regulation Michael Powell, who is determined
to do for
newspapers and television what has already been done to radio and
cable.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features
by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web
page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
