a little news bulletin...

First, USA: The FCC – the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates radio, television, satellite and cable, have now revised the local television multiple ownership rule together with other deregulations. The proposals have not yet been implemented due to appeal.

If you think only the radical left in the US is against this, think again. Ted Turner, who founded CNN, wrote in the Washington Post recently that the latest liberalisation proposal would "stifle debate, inhibit new ideas and shut out smaller businesses trying to compete". “If these rules had been in place in 1970, it would have been virtually impossible for me to start Turner Broadcasting or, 10 years later, to launch CNN”, Turner comments. Also, The National Rifle Association, which represents US gun-owners, fears that control will pass into the hands of "gun-hating" metropolitan media conglomerates. (BBC Online)

Over to Europe: Today an Italian can spend a Saturday shopping at his local supermarket, relaxing in his home, reading a newspaper, before flicking through a few TV channels to watch AC Milan play football, and all these services may have been provided by his prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. And last year Berlusconi pressed forward a bill that reversed a court ruling which would have forced the PM's own ‘Mediaset’ company to sell off one of its three TV stations. (BBC Online)

That was a small update from Italy. In the rest of Europe, the situation is not so ridiculous, but getting there, according to a survey of January 2003, by EFJ – European Federation of Journalists.

This report concludes that there are major threats in Europe’s media landscape. Some of the threats identified are political and private threats to public service broadcasting, power over global media in the hands of few, more and more media concentration, threats to emerging markets in Eastern and Central Europe and regulation getting weaker as media power grows.

There are for instance no restrictions on foreign ownership in the Czech media, and the medium-sized German press group, Passauer Neue Presse (PNP) controlled nearly 100% of the regional newspaper market and part of the national market by end of 1991.

In the United Kingdom, the Communications Bill, published in May 2002, will drastically liberalise media ownership and regulation and make the UK the most liberal country, in
terms of media ownership rules, in Europe. Among the controversial proposal is the lifting of cross-media ownership-restrictions, so that potentially, Rupert Murdoch’s UK-based
News International could acquire TV-channels in the UK even though he already is a heavy player in the printed press. Murdoch is a heavy player internationally, and the main holdings of Murdoch’s News Corporation is the Fox broadcast networks and Fox News, Fox Sports, FX, and other Fox cable channels in the United States; 20th Century Fox studios; thirty-five local U.S. TV stations; the New York Post plus The Times and The Sun of London; the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard; the publishing house HarperCollins; the Sky satellite system in England and the Star satellite system in Asia; about 30 newspapers in Australia as well as holdings in pay-TV Foxtel and other cable and satellite broadcasting.

And now, the weather…


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This is the start of my presentation today in class Globalisation: Media and Telecommunication