By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
In pushing forward an ambitious plan to deregulate the media market, South Korean policymakers often mention the past efforts by the United State's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ease media ownership restrictions as a reference point.
However, a briefing by a senior official from the American media watchdog Wednesday revealed a distinctively different approach in policies between the two governments.
The FCC is required by the U.S. Congress to review the country's broadcasting ownership rules every four years. In 2003, the FCC suggested that the country eliminate its cross-ownership rules that prevents a single company from owning daily and weekly newspapers, as many as two television stations, and as many as eight radio stations in the same metropolitan area.
After the move was blocked by a U.S. court, the FCC in 2007 proposed the relaxing of only the cross-ownership rules between television stations and newspapers. However, that scenario was also blocked by a court decision. The FCC is scheduled to make another proposal in 2010.
The Lee Myung-bak government is now trying to deploy the FCC principles in the Korean market, introducing laws to ease the cross-ownership restrictions between newspapers and broadcasters and allow more companies to own media outlets.
Although critics argue that the move might compromise the country's media diversity, policymakers counter that deregulation is critical for growth of the television market, and thus, the creation of globally competitive media companies that have a chance of competing with the likes of Disney and Fox.
However, FCC deputy chief economist Jonathan Levy said that this reveals a different approach from that of his organization, as the talks about deregulation always centered around the issue of giving viewers more choices.
In making their proposal in 2003, Levy said the FCC research concluded that relaxing cross-ownership rules would benefit the public interest in the top 20 U.S. media markets, but would have the opposite effect in smaller markets.
``The FCC's three goals for media ownership policies were competition, diversity and localism. We wanted to make sure there are competing platforms in a single market competing for public attention, and this would lead to a wider range of programming that will match the interest and preferences of viewers,'' Levy said, adding that Korea finding a comparative example in the U.S. could be misguided, when Americans have more than 1,800 television networks to choose from.
Unlike the U.S., the Korean media market is predominantly controlled by media outlets with national reach.
Levy stressed that the discussion about cross-ownership rules in the U.S. was limited to local geographic markets. The two pillars of the national media ownership rules, which blocks the consolidation between the country's four major terrestrial networks _ ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC _ and prevents any single company reaching over 39 percent of the total U.S. households, hadn't been challenged during the debates.
``It is always about giving viewers multiple choices,'' Levy said.
``If a company is allowed to own television stations in Washington, New York and Chicago, that doesn't necessarily reduce the range of choices available to me.''
Levy refused to comment specifically on his take of the Korean media policies to foster an industrial champion, although admitting that he can ``imagine'' a situation where media diversity could be compromised.