News Corp. wants the FCC to “eliminate the cross-ownership rule as...

News Corp. wants the FCC to “eliminate the cross-ownership rule as a relic from a bygone era,” it said. “At the very least, the Commission should discard the rule in the nation’s largest media markets,” executives said in meetings with aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and to commissioners Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai. A draft order would allow waivers of cross-ownership rules in the top-20 markets, so one company could own a daily and a non-top four rated station (CD Nov 29 p5). Such a rule “would prove to be no more than phantom relief,” News Corp. said in a filing posted Thursday to docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bn33tc). It said top-four stations “are far more likely to produce local news, which makes them the most likely and plausible investors in newspapers, given that medium’s enormous economic pressures.” The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, backing cross-ownership rule deregulation as long as it doesn’t hurt broadcast diversity, doesn’t want “further relaxation” of TV duopoly of radio/TV cross-ownership rules, MMTC officials said during meetings with McDowell and Pai. That’s “because of the harmful impact we believe these combinations have on minority ownership,” the group said in a filing in the docket (http://xrl.us/bn33t3). The draft would allow radio/TV cross-ownership (CD Nov 15 p1).