While members of Congress are protesting the Federal Communications Commission's likely approval of a newspaper/television station cross-ownership rule this Tuesday, December 18, five big media companies say the proposal does not go far enough.

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday, FCC Chair Kevin Martin defended his plan to allow entities to own both newspapers and television stations in the top 20 Nielsen defined markets in the United States. Martin cited shrinking advertising revenue for newspapers, leading to less local news reporting, as the reason for the consolidation move.

"Allowing cross-ownership may help to forestall the erosion in local news coverage by enabling companies to share these local news gathering costs across multiple media platforms," Martin told the Committee.

But the Sinclair Broadcast Group, Gannett Inc., Media General, Morris Communications, and Clear Channel all say they want even more FCC lenience in buying up media properties. Over the last two weeks these five corporations have lobbied the Commission for further relaxation of its media ownership rules; a host of comments arrived on December 11th, the last day for public comments on Martin's proposal.

Media General, which owns a wide variety of media properties in the southeastern United States, filed a 37 page comment on December 11th calling for the "complete repeal of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule in all markets." The company has proposed a substitute plan that would allow broad TV/newspaper cross-ownership, provided that the TV station in question provides "an average of five percent locally relevant and responsive programming" from five a.m. to midnight.

Georgia based Morris Communications' December 11th filing echoed Media General's call for the total elimination of the rule, without offering any substitute proposal.

On the same day Gannett Co., Inc., publisher of USA Today, submitted an eight page statement proposing a modification of the Martin plan. The FCC Chair's proposal would prohibit a cross-ownership deal if the TV station is among the top four ranked signals in the Designated Market Area (DMA). Gannett's plan would eliminate this restriction.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group also filed with the FCC on December 11th. Their statement protested that Martin's proposal did nothing to weaken the FCC's "anti-duopoly" prohibitions on owning two TV stations in the same region.

"Given the high likelihood that a new rule is unlikely to take effect any time soon," Sinclair wrote to the FCC, "the Commission should, at a minimum, take the incremental step of granting waiver requests of the 'duopoly' rule in those situations where an applicant can demonstrate that no harm will result from the proposed combination and that there will be public interest benefits."

Finally, Clear Channel has met or filed with the FCC five times this month. The company wants the FCC to remove all "subcaps" on the number of terrestrial radio stations an entity can buy.

Right now the limit is eight stations in a major market. Clear Channel wants, at minimum, to be able to buy at least twelve stations in markets with seventy five stations or more (New York; Los Angeles), and ten stations in Arbitron defined regions with between sixty and seventy-four stations.

But while big media outfits are clamoring for more consolidation, members of the Senate Commerce Committee expressed skepticism at Martin's proposal. Even Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi wondered out loud why the FCC needs to come to the defense of the newspaper industry.

"One thing that really confuses me," Lott told Martin as he perused some papers, as if reviewing the Communications Act, "the FCC is worrying about the financial condition of newspapers? What? I don't see where this is an area you should be that engaged. It's communications. I'm not sure that print is included in that."

Lott supports Senate Bill 2332, The Media Ownership Act of 2007, introduced by North Dakota Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan. The proposed law would require the FCC to conduct a complete separate rule making on any changes to the commission's broadcast and newspaper ownership rules and offer the public a 60 day comment period on the rule.

The Commerce Committee unanimously approved the bill, which would effectively delay Martin's proposal by at least two months. It has 20 co-sponsors, including Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joseph Biden.

But most observers expect Martin to push his newspaper/TV cross-ownership proposal on Tuesday with the support of his two fellow Republican commissioners: Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate.