Is this the last stand for media diversity?

The dictionary defines “diversity” as “difference, variety.” But is just having more, by itself, better? And is the near-sacrosanct ideal of free expression served if many alternatives are controlled by only a few?

A debate over those two basic questions, as applied to television news and entertainment programs, is behind the thousands of pages filed with the Federal Communications Commission regarding the future of U.S. media ownership rules. These issues will also be at the heart of a forum Thursday at Columbia University in New York, with others to follow in Richmond, Va., and at USC.

Assuming that the government further relaxes rules that were previously eased in 1996, you can bank on even fewer media companies owning or controlling more of what we see and hear.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, offers “more” as the solution. A free-market advocate, Powell has stated that the media -- sprouting limbs almost daily thanks to new technologies -- are “more diverse ... than at any time in their history.”

From a volume standpoint, this is undeniably true, with the typical U.S. household receiving almost 90 channels via cable or satellite dish. In that context, it’s probably hard to fathom how diversity could be a problem -- especially when a few decades ago three networks towered above all.

It isn’t so simple, however, if the term denotes a multiplicity of independent voices -- a goal easily lost in the crush toward corporate earnings, as Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and Disney’s Michael Eisner oversee vast media empires that turn ideas into “product” -- potentially homogenizing them in the process.

Moreover, it’s not just tweedy professors, conspiracy nuts and aging hippies sounding alarms about the danger of unleashing the media titans, but Sony Pictures (one of the few major studios that doesn’t own a broadcast network), the Writers Guild of America, the Caucus for Television Producers, Writers & Directors, and the producers of “Roseanne,” “Murphy Brown” and “All in the Family,” to name a few.

Even Warner Bros. TV Distribution President Dick Robertson -- who works for a little outfit called AOL Time Warner -- weighed in recently, pointing out that “the decision-making process on what the American public sees” has been halved in terms of how many companies own TV stations. In comments to the FCC, USC Center for Communications Law & Policy Executive Director Sandra Ortiz -- a former 20th Century Fox executive -- said the once-hallowed concept of local media ownership has become “so rare as to be almost quaint.”

Take Los Angeles, where Viacom’s holdings include AM news-radio stations KFWB and KNX as well as KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV, which officially inaugurate their shared parentage next week. In addition to occupying the same Hollywood facility, field reporters are using microphones with a KCBS label on one side and KCAL on the other.

We still get hours of news between them, but with one team calling the shots, is that true diversity -- any more than other “duopolies” pairing KTTV and KCOP, KNBC and KMEX, or KTLA and the Los Angeles Times, both owned by the Tribune Co.?

Executives say these arrangements provide greater news-gathering resources, but the primary incentive is not so much about blanketing Main Street as impressing Wall Street, leading to higher profit margins that benefit Viacom but not necessarily viewers.

“Profit maximization has never been the sole point of U.S. communications policy,” Douglas Gomery, a professor in the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, wrote last year, adding, “Today there is less diversity of opinion -- and less diversity of news sources -- than in 1975.” As a result, he argued, ownership limits are “more relevant and important than ever.”

To cite one potential consequence, several academics indicted TV news coverage of last year’s congressional elections as the worst in memory, both in terms of depth (one study found that the average candidate sound bite ran 9.5 seconds) and quantity. “When local broadcast news programs disappear or fail to meet their community’s needs, the public’s 1st Amendment rights are compromised,” Ortiz stated.

As for entertainment, again, is more better if it’s simply more of the same? In cable, executives have enthused over “multiplexing” or “repurposing” -- a fancy way of saying that sister channels recycle programs from the major networks. So instead of creating compelling original fare, TNT runs the sprockets off movies the way independent TV stations once did, and the erstwhile Family Channel shifts from cut-rate children’s programs under Fox to repeating ABC shows under Disney.

Tackling Powell’s assertion that market forces will promote the public interest, the reality is that those programs historically deemed most desirable to society -- political, public affairs and children’s shows -- have always struggled amid the flashing lights of today’s media square. Left on their own, educational programs will inevitably be chased into retreat, unless “Joe Millionaire” and “Fear Factor” are passed off as “social experiments.”

The most pragmatic question is whether the public actually cares. Advocates like Jeff Chester, of the Center for Digital Democracy, contend somewhat persuasively that interest in these issues would rise if people were better informed by the TV outlets whose corporate parents, ultimately, profit from their indifference. Either that or viewers are too content watching their 90 channels to bother.

For the most compelling warning of what might be to come, look no farther than radio, where the FCC virtually abandoned regulatory safeguards in the 1990s. Subsequent abuse of “marketplace solutions” led to a single company, Clear Channel Communications, voraciously swallowing competitors -- its Blob-like powers of absorption helping fuel the switch to nationally syndicated hosts and formats at the expense of local voices and, yes, diversity.

Powell and fellow Republicans hold a majority of seats on the commission, so opponents of a wide-open media frontier are mounting the equivalent of a desperate last stand. Whether they can awaken the townsfolk remains to be seen, but what does appear certain is that an official named Powell will greatly influence this country in 2003, and his dad just might, too.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.