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BNH Urges Officials To Oppose Tribune Deal
Takeover would violate FCC rules, publishers argue
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Business New Haven
4/3/2000
By: BNH
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Principals of the company that publishes Business New Haven have asked public officials to block the acquisition of Times Mirror by the Tribune Co., arguing the new company would control too many sources of news in Connecticut.
Michael C. Bingham, editor, and Mitchell young, publisher, of the independent biweekly business journal have written letters to state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman and Christopher J. Dodd, opposing the deal announced last month.
The $9 billion pact would unite the Courant with the Hartford-based WTIC-TV under Tribune ownership. The company has also proposed to buy the Waterbury-based WTXX-TV.
The Federal Communications Commission currently prohibits so-called cross-ownership of a daily newspaper and television station in a single market.
Bingham and Young reminded Blumenthal that he has emerged as a national leader in defense of consumers against large tobacco companies and firearms manufacturers. The letter to him urged that Blumenthal “use your moral stature to protect the citizens of Connecticut against conglomeration of news sources, diversity of which is so essential to our democracy.”
On March 27, Blumenthal said he supports the cross-ownership ban generally, although he had yet to take a position on the Tribune-Times Mirror amalgamation, which is subject to regulatory approval.
In the wake of the media-merger frenzy, growing media giants have lobbied Congress to relax the FCC's cross-ownership restrictions. The present rules would permit the Tribune Co. to jointly own WTIC-TV and the Courant until 2006, when the television station's license comes up for renewal.
In the mid-1980s, Times Mirror was forced to sell a cable television system it owned in order to satisfy the state's Department of Public Utility Control.
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