Abstract
The merger of CBS and Viacom represents the latest and biggest in a series of "old media" combinations. These consolidations would not have been possible without the deregulatory turn in mass media policy that began with the Fowler Commission in the Reagan era and was codified in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This deregulatory turn and the consolidations it has permitted have led to a public debate about the Federal Communications Commission's role in industry structure. This essay contends that instead of taking a single, deregulatory course, the Commission is engaged in a multipronged approach to structural regulation of the mass media. The hard questions that face both sides of the existing regulatory debate are identified, and, having provided an alternative account of the FCC's strategy, the viability of the Commission's multipronged approach itself, is addressed.