Waive If You're Happy!

Media General is a pretty big player on the regional corporate media scene. How big? Well, they own:

1) WJHL TV, Channel 11 in Johnson City
2) The Winston-Salem Journal
3) The Bristol Herald Courier
4) The Hickory Daily Record
5) The Statesville Record & Landmark
6) The Morganton News Herald
7) The McDowell News
8) The Concord & Kannapolis Independent Tribune
9) The Eden Daily News
10) The Reidsville Review

It's good to know that the FCC gave them a huge present the other day--an interesting thing called a waiver. From stopbigmedia.com:

On Feb. 4, the Federal Communications Commission finally released the details of the devastating rule change it voted on back in December. These new rules would allow one company to own both a major newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same media market – tossing out a ban on “cross-ownership” that has been in place for more than 30 years.
...
The final text makes clear the extent to which the FCC has abandoned its mission to protect the public interest.

Not content to open the door for massive media consolidation in the future, Martin snuck in a series of controversial waivers that take effect immediately. These waivers amount to a “get out of jail free” card for Gannett and Media General, which have been violating the law for years. In several cases, these companies already own the top-ranked stations in a community. Allowing them to own the daily paper gives them a monopoly over the largest media outlets in a given market. This represents a real threat to the diversity of voices and the quality of the local news in these communities.

...

...Martin portrayed the new rules as a modest change while building in enormous loopholes that put communities across the country at risk of greater media consolidation.

...

Just days prior to the FCC’s vote, a bipartisan group of 26 senators sent a letter to Martin warning that if he proceeded with these changes they would act swiftly to overturn any new rules the FCC established. In the week after the vote, more than 200,000 concerned citizens signed on to an open letter calling on Congress to follow through on that promise. Now that the rules have been published, we’ll be working hard to be sure they do. You can help by signing the letter today and telling your friends.

Full article here.