BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. The Senate Commerce Committee has been busy the past two weeks concocting legislation to overturn much of the recent FCC ruling that relaxes media ownership regulations. Some of the rollbacks the committee voted on include returning the National Audience Reach Cap for TV broadcasters with had been raised to 45 percent by the FCC back to 35 percent and restoring the ban on one company owning several media outlets in one city. The Senate's apparent rebuke of the FCC decision has been variously hailed as momentous and delightful and derided as confusing and utterly futile. In the momentously delightful corner, Washington Post columnist Tom Shales dubbed the committee's action, quote, "a victory or at least a step on the road to victory for the American people." And in the confusingly futile corner I am joined by Cable World's Alicia Mundy.

ALICIA MUNDY: [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: Alicia, welcome back to the show!

ALICIA MUNDY: So I'm confusingly futile -- that's me.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] All right. In one word or less, does meaningful legislation canceling out the FCC's action have the slightest chance of being passed by both houses of Congress?

ALICIA MUNDY: No. That would be no.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Alicia. Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to have you once again. [LAUGHTER] Alicia Mundy is-- Oh, you know what? -- I'll ask you more questions anyway. [LAUGHS] Tell me please why in your latest piece you described yourself as being in the "snowball's chance in hell corner" on this question.

ALICIA MUNDY: Well I sat through the hearing that they held on this latest piece of rollback legislation, and I've never seen so many born again regulators out of a group of free marketers. This bill I think is what we call legislation by public relations. It is freighted with so much baggage it has to sink of its own weight. One of these provisions, for instance, would take existing radio stations away from Clear Channel! Now Clear Channel right now is the poster child of media consolidation and what's wrong with big media companies, but nonetheless you don't take away a station from a company that bought it legally and out in the open! You can't do that. I mean it's like Mr. Rogers--: boys and girls -- can you say Constitutional Challenge?

BOB GARFIELD:And let's make the point here that this is not one piece of proposed legislation but two. Tell me what the second bill has within it and, and what its chances of passage actually are.

ALICIA MUNDY: The second bill does have a very good chance of passage. It's the basic re-authorization bill for the budget for the FCC. And that's the one that contains the provision that rolls back the two year review to four years. But the first bill contains the really good language that gives the FCC the right to re-regulate as well as de-regulate in the public interest. That unfortunately is stuck into the bill that contains, you know, every item in the kitchen sink!

BOB GARFIELD:Okay, now -- if you're right and that this proposed legislation is a sort of window dressing, why are the senators on the Commerce Committee going through with this exercise to begin with?

ALICIA MUNDY: Part of it is that they didn't expect the public reaction that they got. Until 6 months ago, really, when Michael Copps began pushing this whole issue and trying to demand public hearings, nobody except for two hundred lobbyists and a bunch of media moguls even had any idea what was really going on. Members of the Senate did, but they don't count here, of course. And they did not expect a public outcry. They didn't expect to have William Safire coming at them with both barrels! So now they're trying to suddenly say gee, we didn't expect this to happen. And this is silly! They've had every chance they could in the last couple of years to stop the FCC. Basically they're like people who have suddenly been hit with a paternity suit and they're saying I have no idea what you're talking about -- I never had sex [LAUGHTER] with this person! And it's ridiculous! This is their baby!

BOB GARFIELD:But in fact in your latest piece you say there is DNA evidence of the senators' complicity including that of committee chairman John McCain. You say the proof is in a tiny addendum to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 known as Section 202H. What is Section 202H?

ALICIA MUNDY: It's a very tiny little provision that says the FCC must review its ownership rules of the media every two years and it must get rid of any rule that it can no longer justify as being in the public interest. They figured that what they couldn't get put into the Telecom Act directly in print and chiseled in stone they'd get a second chance to have when the FCC had to review all of its ownership rules and justify every single one of them. And these senators voted for that language.

BOB GARFIELD:Is it possible, Alicia, that notwithstanding the kind of PR tactics that you say the Commerce Committee is employing that the FCC and the committee itself have unleashed a force that will trigger a series of events that even the estimable John McCain cannot control?

ALICIA MUNDY: I think it's entirely possible that this crazy bill in various forms will wend its way through and even though I think that it will be killed in the House by Billy Tauzin [sp?], if Tauzin again were to step aside, then something could happen, and then, and then you're going to have to deal with it, because they will have court challenges from all of the companies; it will be held up forever; and eventually all they end up is with egg on their faces and your average taxpayer wondering well what did we just pay for the FCC to do for the past two years -- wasn't this just a waste of money and effort?

BOB GARFIELD: So would you want to change your analysis to say maybe not a snowball's chance in Hell but a snowball's chance in Purgatory?

ALICIA MUNDY: In Purgatory. Let's put it in Purgatory.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] All right, Alicia. Thank you very much!

ALICIA MUNDY: Okay.

BOB GARFIELD: Alicia Mundy is a fellow at the New America Foundation and a senior editor for Cable World.

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