The Fittest? Make That Survival of the Biggest

People wrestling with pressing concerns such as mortgages and educating their kids can’t always be expected to focus on more ethereal matters, perhaps one reason John McCain’s presidential candidacy--rife with talk of politics’ “iron triangle” and campaign-finance reform--ultimately fizzled.

In terms of real-world resonance, conflicts central to the television business can be even more arcane and impenetrable. After all, why should the average Joe or Josephine stay up nights fretting about the millionaire producers of “Homicide,” who recently filed a Superior Court complaint alleging that NBC shafted them--to the tune of “well over $20 million”--by packaging their series with a less coveted property when selling rerun rights to the Lifetime cable network?

The issues inherent in that case cut to the core of TV industry consolidation, with single companies forming their own iron triangles by casting themselves in the roles of producer, broadcaster and rerun distributor on the same project.

This raises the specter of all kinds of chicanery, spurring similar lawsuits against Disney and Fox. To producers and their representatives, it’s less a question of who gets rich--the millionaire producer or the billion-dollar corporation--than one of fairness and talent receiving its due.

Yet while the public remains seemingly unmoved by TV’s twisted inner workings, the government, after years of snoozing as big companies gobbled up first smaller ones, then each other, has finally exhibited some interest in potential antitrust abuses of corporate gigantism, at least so far as Microsoft is concerned.

Given that, could a roster of entertainment giants shrinking through one merger after another actually become the subject of renewed scrutiny? Don’t bet on it.

Indeed, broadcasting has become a relatively small aspect of the big picture in communications, the underlying theme of an event last Friday sponsored by the USC Center for Communication Law & Policy and the American Enterprise Institute.

The conference’s goal was to revisit the Telecommunications Act of 1996--a sweeping bill designed to ease regulation of telephone companies, broadcasters and cable TV operators in the name of increased competition--and see whether it’s working.

The answer, most of the academics agreed, was at best a very qualified yes, but no one disputed the legislation’s larger aim, namely to hasten “convergence,” a term referring to that day in the not-too-distant future (no one has the foggiest clue how far off) when TV, the Internet, the computer and the telephone will all arrive via the same box or wire, dispensing information and entertainment in one “Jetsons”-esque package.

Seeking to increase competition in telephone and cable service, the act also cleared the way for rapid consolidation, giving birth to a series of massive mergers that, theoretically, will give these new behemoths the resources to invest in space-age information systems and networks. At the same time, the hope is that companies will battle it out to provide such service, bringing prices down for consumers.

Though that sounds laudable, in the short term at least, the act has produced the opposite effect, putting more news, entertainment and information under the stewardship of fewer corporate entities and allowing competitive abuses to go largely ignored.

Soon, two broadcast networks, CBS and UPN, could fall under the same corporate umbrella as holdings of Viacom, and NBC has acquired a minority interest in Pax TV and already moved to find synergies there.

Of the 16 new prime-time series candidates that ABC previewed for advertisers last month, 14 are produced by a subsidiary of Walt Disney Co., the network’s corporate parent, hardly a demonstration of diversifying supply. Indeed, the truly independent producer has largely gone the way of the dinosaur, forced to get in bed with a network or studio, or--as dozens have done--find another line of work, perhaps something with a dot-com attached to it.

Radio, even less fettered, has undergone dramatic concentration, with single companies controlling hundreds of stations.

Titus Levi, a professor in USC’s Annenberg School for Communications, noted that there is evidence of anti-competitive side effects from this trend, with radio mergers resulting in higher advertising rates--a problem only for media buyers, one could argue, if it wasn’t obvious to whom advertisers will ultimately pass along those costs.

“Technology may undo some of this damage,” Levi added, alluding to new communication channels created by the Internet and other innovations.

Other elements of the Telecommunications Act also haven’t worked out as advocates and regulators planned. Consider the provision mandating the V-chip, a device that allows parents to protect their kids from smut on TV by blocking it out. Hailed as a major breakthrough, the technology hasn’t graduated to a top-of-mind concern if a recent study is any indication, with almost 40% of parents saying they have never heard of it. Proponents insist that parents simply need more information, distributing printed guides to educate them.

No offense, but with all the trees The Times alone has felled in the service of informing people about the V-chip, anyone who doesn’t know anything about it by now flat-out doesn’t care.

In 1996, when the telecommunications bill was passed with great fanfare, President Clinton stated that consumers will benefit from lower prices in phone and cable service and “continue to benefit from a diversity of voices and viewpoints in radio, television and the print media.”

One can debate whether technology will triumph over the long haul, but so far, consolidation is bringing us those supposedly diverse voices through a dwindling handful of corporate megaphones.

What we really have here, then, is a frantic race, with companies trying to swallow up competitors and protect their market dominance before new players sprout up from the wings--tiny voices that can grow loud quickly with a flip of the right technological switch.

The finer points of this mini-thriller being played out are no doubt lost on most people busy grappling with down-to-earth concerns, folks to whom “convergence” still implies yielding to oncoming traffic. Still, be advised that the conglomerates traveling the Information Superhighway are moving at a breakneck clip and that as they do, a lot of little guys are being run over.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.