When the FCC permitted the extreme centralization of ownership we have today, it destroyed thousands of “mom and pop” broadcast outlets. The effect not only centralized the news and editorial content, but it also negatively affected music airplay. Lesser known and promoted artists have little if any chance of getting on-air due to consolidation’s placement of programming control in fewer and fewer hands.

Additionally, a lesser discussed effect is that consolidation of ownership killed off accessibility to the airwaves for small businesses for advertising purposes. When a “cluster” of stations is owned by a single owner in a market, there is less opportunity for the small business owner to pit one station sales rep against the other in order to make their best advertising purchase deal. There’s also a certain amount of price fixing that necessarily occurs when one sales team sells for 10 stations as opposed to a sales team (and separate ownership) for each of them.

What I would propose is to eliminate FCC monitoring of content and simply abolish that portion of the organization and fire the government employees who were working their. Then simplify the FCC’s duties and focus exclusively on preventing monopolies in the marketplace. What we need is to break up large media conglomerates so that no handful of entities control the media.

Despite the claims that the Democrats and Republicans are very different, I tend to hold that they are not that different. As such, I do not feel represented merely because both CNN and Foxnews exist. What I’d like to see is smaller corporations which control only one network. That would lead to a more varied number of views.

Also it might be good to have increased public broadcast but without corporate control. In other words, just open up bandwidth to individuals who can broadcast via their home webcam.