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FCC Commissioner Michael "Mercedes Divide" Powell has a guest editorial in today's New York Times. In the piece, he attempts to counter much of the criticism from the right and left over the FCC decision to relax ownership rules of broadcast outlets. Although he acknowledges the shift of quality content from broadcast to cable outlets, he fails to address one of the larger concerns about media diversity: the concern that poor persons will have access to a narrower range of ideas in broadcast media. He says, "In reality, those five companies own only 25 percent of more than 300 broadcast, satellite and cable channels, but because of their popularity, 80 percent of the viewing audience chooses to watch them," which on the surface appears to be compelling argument, but he entirely ignores the issue of distribution. Out of those 300 channels how many are available to basic cable subscribers, let alone broadcast-only viewers? Distribution is determined by business relationships, and its unlikely that the independent cable channels are going to be carried by many cable or satellite providers. Conversely, the channels that come from media megacorps - Disney's ESPN, AOL-Time Warner's CNN, and USA Network's USA - are found on nearly every cable network.

Powell also doesn't mention how the FCC lifted the rule preventing a company from owning a newspaper and a broadcast channel in the same market. He doesn't address the effects of a scenario where a one-paper town, like Austin or OKC, finds its broadcast news controlled by the same agenda-pushing organization that controls its paper. Finally, Powell doesn't address the effects on consolidation in the radio industry, which was deregulated before television and other media. The ascendancy of Clear Channel, Infinity, and other radio conglomerates has been met with widespread criticism for their ideological bent and delocalized cost-cutting measures.