John B. Breaux: “I will just make a couple of comments in opposition to the resolution because I think the resolution is sort of a…”

“I will just make a couple of comments in opposition to the resolution because I think the resolution is sort of a broad-brush approach that takes down everything the FCC has recommended, things that make sense that are good and also things about which some people may have questions. It really is a resolution that assumes, in my opinion, that if things are small, they are necessarily good; if things are big, they are necessarily bad. I think particularly as this is clearly spelled out with regard to part of the FCC's rule that deals with the question of television ownership, the rule from the FCC basically allowed the television stations to move up to a 45-percent-of-viewer cap before they would be prohibited from owning additional television stations. It seems to me that if you look at media concentration now, you have 1,721 television stations in the United States and the networks only own a very small percentage of those stations. If you consider the people who watch the stations, you will find also that the viewership of these network-owned stations, indeed, is very small. It is not as if a couple of networks have all the viewers and are therefore monopolizing what people see and there is no diversity. That is simply not the fact at all.”