Old media urge FCC to ease ownership rules

October 24, 2006 In a series of arguments filed Monday with the FCC, such companies as the Tribune Co., NBC Universal and CBS told the FCC that its restrictions on who can own what media property where have to be eased if newspapers and broadcast outlets are to survive in the face of cable and Internet competition. "Four years ago, when the FCC last reviewed its broadcast-ownership rules, the YouTube.com domain name had not even been registered, the first Windows version of the audio iPod was just rolling out, Google was only a search engine, cable companies sold primarily video packages, and telephone companies sold primarily voice service," CBS wrote in its filing. Today, just four years later, Google is preparing to acquire 18-month-old video-sharing Web site YouTube for more than $1.65 billion (which will increase Google's market capitalization by less than 2%), Apple has had its fifth-generation video iPod on the market for more than a year, and cable and telephone companies now sell packages of video, voice, broadband and wireless services.

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