Are bigger voices better voices?

Depending on whom you ask, next week could mark the end of consumer choice in the media, or usher in a new era of quality and resources. Or neither.

On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to relax long-standing media-ownership rules, and furor is filling op/ed pages and spurring ad campaigns nationwide.

The debate is one of the sharpest over media policy in years, as corporate interests, keen on modifying "outdated" regulations, confront a public increasingly uncomfortable with consolidation. If, as many observers expect, the rules are loosened to allow for ownership of multiple media outlets in a single market, the industry could be transformed - though the extent of that revolution remains unclear.

"This is not the final battle. This is the first battle," says Robert McChesney, head of Free Press, a group that advocates media diversity. "There will be recourse on a number of different levels," he says. "There's no doubt that members of Congress will come back with media-ownership legislation in the next session."

Driving public concern is the fear that most media outlets could fall into the hands of a few players, limiting diversity of voices and local coverage.

In print and TV ads this week, a coalition of groups portrayed an industry in which a few media moguls - like Rupert Murdoch, the man behind the Fox News Channel and the New York Post - reign supreme. Already, about three-quarters of what Americans see, hear, and read in the media is controlled by a handful of large companies. That, argue critics, is not desirable in a democracy, where independent voices are essential.

Congress and the FCC have received hundreds of thousands of e-mails and letters on the topic. Though the public debate is less than fever pitch, grass-roots meetings attended by various of the FCC's five commissioners have drawn crowds from a few dozen to nearly 1,000. The plan is opposed by both conservative and liberal groups, from the National Rifle Association to the National Organization for Women.

The two Democratic commissioners on the FCC's decision-making board, and members of Congress from both parties, have tried unsuccessfully to persuade Republican FCC chairman Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, to delay the vote and allow more time to consider the rules. But the meeting is expected to go ahead, as planned, on Monday.

Even some experts who say deregulation will help the media environment aren't convinced that now is the right time, since not all Americans have access to the full range of media options. "Short term, I'm uncomfortable about it, because we haven't yet gotten to the point where I think it is the most appropriate remedy," says Everette Dennis, professor of media management at New York's Fordham University.

On the docket for Monday are several rules, including those that cover bans on ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market, owning more than one of the top four TV stations in a market, and a single company owning local stations that reach more than 35 percent of US TV households.

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