Good piece from the Detroit News editorial column telling government not to increase its <a href='http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0402/06/a10-56877.htm' target='_blank'>regulatory paws</a> over media.

The airwaves are finite and a public resource owned by us all. Broadcasting fundamentally isn't the same as print journalism because there are a limited number of positions on the dial.

In contrast, the number of newspapers or magazines a community may have is limited only by the number of trees available.

So I have a hard time getting worked up about government regulating the airwaves. In fact, I think the federal government could be doing more than it now does to ensure market forces produce a diversity of content.

Of course, I have a hard time getting worked up about what happened at the Super Bowl or Bono's F-bomb. Whatever.

One thing that editorial did not disclose: Gannett Co., the owner of the Detroit News, also owns 22 television stations including 13 NBC affiliates and six CBS affiliates.

Now, that editorial seems fairly consistent with the long tradition of libertarian views on The Detroit News' editorial page. And Gannett is a massive company; the editorial writers at the Detroit News are not taking direct orders from headquarters in McLean, Va. (home of USA Today).

But the editorial is clearly consistent with what works best for Gannett's bottom line -- and I have a hunch The Detroit News editorial page would be reluctant to take a position wildly out of step with what's best for Gannett's bottom line.

Gannett's television holdings:

KMOH-TV (Ch. 6-NBC), Kingman, Ariz.
KNAZ-TV (Ch. 2-NBC), Flagstaff, Ariz.
KPNX-TV (Ch. 12-NBC), Phoenix
KTHV-TV (Ch. 11-CBS), Little Rock, Ark.
KXTV-TV (Ch. 10-ABC), Sacramento, Calif.
KUSA-TV (Ch. 9-NBC), Denver
WUSA-TV (Ch. 9-CBS), Washington
WJXX-TV (Ch. 25-ABC), Jacksonville, Fla.
WTLV-TV (Ch. 12-NBC), Jacksonville, Fla.
WTSP-TV (Ch. 10-CBS), Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.
WMAZ-TV (Ch. 13-CBS), Macon, Ga.
WXIA-TV (Ch. 11-NBC), Atlanta
WLBZ-TV (Ch. 2-NBC), Bangor, Maine
WCSH-TV (Ch. 6-NBC), Portland, Maine
WZZM-TV (Ch. 13-ABC), Grand Rapids, Mich.
KARE-TV (Ch. 11-NBC), Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
KSDK-TV (Ch. 5-NBC), St. Louis
WGRZ-TV (Ch. 2-NBC), Buffalo, N.Y.
WFMY-TV (Ch. 2-CBS), Greensboro, N.C.
WKYC-TV (Ch. 3-NBC), Cleveland
WLTX-TV (Ch. 19-CBS), Columbia, S.C.
WBIR-TV (Ch. 10-NBC), Knoxville, Tenn.

If you're referring to literally airwaves, then it's true that the bands are limited. (Actually, if every car and home radio were equipped with shortwave bands, we'd have a lot more "space" to work with ... but I digress).

But I don't think that TV/Radio media - as an industry - is limited at all. There seem to be literally hundreds of TV channels available via satellite and digital cable. And I've read with a certain degree of pleasure that XM and Sirius satellite radio has been steadily taking off. So if the FM dial becomes a haven of "morning zoos", satellite will easily become increasingly popular.

This is why I wonder about your third paragraph, in which you voiced your concern about there being enough diverse content available in the marketplace. I'm seeing the opposite. 25 years ago it was some VHF channels and NBC-CBS-ABC, and nothin' else. But now there seems to be a network available for every subject you can think of.

Good points.

I guess there are two notions about media diversity that stick in my craw:

1. Clear Channel. This company has grown so big that it is hard to point to another company that has remotely the same market position. In most of the markets it occupies, it owns a substantial percentage of the radio stations. And -- while this is admittedly hard to measure -- it seems to own many of the best dial positions.

2. For most homes, what you have access to still comes down to your cable provider, which is a big corporation that is going to be far more concerned with its own bottom line than anything else. In other words, cable providers -- in my experience -- seem quite willing to play hard ball with stations and networks not in its portfolio. What you are able to see can come down to raw exhibitions of corporate power rather than what might actually rise or fall given an even footing in the market place.

My favorite example of this is what went down in Rochester, a Time Warner market. For years, the local UPN affiliate had been pushing for a way to get onto the cable system. Federal law normally requires local television stations to be on the local cable system; this UPN affiliate's problem was that it was a low power station, and federal rules down apply to lower power stations.

It got so absurd at one point that Time Warner created its own WB affiliate and placed it on a sweet spot on the dial even though this "affiliate" did not broadcast over the air at all. It was a cable only operation, just like Time Warner's 24-hour Rochester cable news operation (which also had a sweet spot on the dial).

The UPN affiliate eventually got on. I don't know what the financial terms were, but I think UPN ended up on channel 99 or something -- most definitely *not* a sweet spot.

That's just one example. I assume there are hundreds of others between News Corp., Time Warner, Disney and other corporate giants. Remember Disney and Time Warner fighting so furiously that at one point ABC was blacked out for a while?

A few big corporations own most of the pipes into our homes when it comes to television. Satellite is helping, but I still tend to think any local cable provider occupies the same local market position as Microsoft does in operating systems.

It's an awful lot of concentrated power, and it does concern me.

Being that Gannett is my paper's #1 competitor, they are evil. Evil, evil ,evil!

The Gannett papers in this area are horrible. We scoop them on everything. In the area of sports, both Gannett papers borrow other cities' professional teams and that comprises most of their sports coverage.

Now tell me why people in Jackson, MS care about the Dallas Cowboys, NO Saints, the Hornets and the Grizzlies?

There are some local sports going on in Jackson!