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The consolidation of ownership will continue to drive the media industry in 2003, says Dr. Loy Singleton, professor and chair of the telecommunication and film department at The University of Alabama.

"If innovation and diversity across a wide variety of different formats is your cup of tea, it's not likely that you will see much in the next year that will be encouraging," he said.

There could be changes in the Federal Communication Commission rules that limit the number of television stations a single company can own. Singleton says that consumers might see the same type of ownership consolidation in television that radio has experienced the last few years since Congress took the cap off of national radio station ownership six years ago.

"In the grand scheme of things, regulatory policy does ebb and flow over the course of decades," he said. "Today's situation began in the early 1980s with a liberalization of key FCC rules regulating radio and television station programming and ownership. Some of those changes were beneficial from an audience point of view. But in general it probably has aided and abetted "copycat" programming rather than an increase in true variety of television and radio program formats.

"Having 10 or 12 different cop shows across three networks is a kind of variety — there are all those spin-offs — but it's not truly diverse," Singleton said.

He says the overall economics of local broadcasting continues to press the industry toward reducing overhead and clustering stations together into groups so they can operate more efficiently.

"That does not necessarily lend itself to a great deal of innovation, imagination and experimentation across broadcasting program formats," Singleton concluded. "Station owners naturally tend to imitate success."

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