Speaking of socializing media, acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps is someone who has devoted much of his life to regulating the media marketplace into the ground. If he had his way, federal bureaucrats would be controlling virtually every aspect of the media universe. Nothing would get done with Big Nanny’s permission.

That’s what makes his recent comments about the impact of media regulation so delicious.. and hypocritical.  According to an article  Bloomberg ran on Thursday, Copps is now saying that, with newspapers struggling to remain afloat, the FCC should now reconsider regulations that prohibit combined ownership of broadcast stations and newspapers.  The agency should “visit this whole problem” before long, Copps apparently told Bloomberg.

“Visit this problem before long”??  Please!  Congress and the FCC have had opportunities to “visit” and revisit this problem for many years now, but it has been Michael Copps and his merry band of media reformistas who have stopped every reform effort dead in its tracks.  (See my essays “Congress Fiddles, Newspapers Burn” and “Media Deregulation is Dead” for more evidence of how these radicals hijacked media policy in this country.)  As I documented in my 2005 Media Myths book, these charlatans have used hyperbolic rhetoric, shameless fear-mongering, and unsubstantiated claims in opposition to each and every sensible effort to reform our nation’s outdated media ownership policies.  Those laws and regulations have created artificial market structures and hindered the ability of media operators to find new business models that might throw them a lifeline in difficult times.

Consider the fact that it was just 14 months ago that then-Commissioner Copps issued this gem of a hysteria-ridden statement in response to the agency’s last effort to ever-so-slightly loosen the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership rule:

Today’s decision would make George Orwell proud. We claim to be giving the news industry a shot in the arm—but the real effect is to reduce total newsgathering. We shed crocodile tears for the financial plight of newspapers—yet the truth is that newspaper profits are about double the S&P 500 average.

I remember when I read that back in Dec ’07 and thinking to myself that Michael Copps is either willfully blind to the facts or intentionally twisting them to suit his own ends.  Regardless, the writing was on the wall years ago with the rise of unprecedented information abundance and media competition and there was no good reason to force traditional media operators to face these new challenges with one arm tied behind their backs.  But that’s exactly what Copps and his radical cronies over at Free Press and other groups did.

But now Copps is suddenly having second thoughts?  Now that he has dug their graves and driven stakes through their hearts, he suddenly wants to cast himself as an Information Age Jesus and resurrect Lazarus?  Oh, the hypocrisy of it all!  As my boss Ken Ferree recently pointed out:

They’ve all now suddenly discovered that the business model for daily newspapers is under strain and may not be sustainable? Was it the New York Times slouching toward bankruptcy that got their attention, or the failure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer? […] The sad truth is, the newspaper business has been heading toward a cliff for the last ten years; only willful ignorance can explain the failure of these people who have so recently come to be concerned about the fate of journalism to acknowledge the threat. Time will tell whether their new-found concern has come too late, or whether they have poisoned the political well too thoroughly for any effective policy change.

Moreover, as Ken also points out, it’s not just Copps who has apparently seen the light and had a sudden conversion.

This follows a letter from Speaker Pelosi to Attorney General Holder suggesting restrained antitrust review of transactions involving newspaper assets, and a proposal from Senator Cardin (D-MD) for a quasi-government bailout of newspaper firms.

Ken has more commentary on the Pelosi letter here.   Like Ken, when reading these comments from Pelosi and Copps, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  I suppose I should be happy that they have finally seen the error in their ways.  It’s just a shame it took such devistation for them to open their eyes to the truth.  Regulatory reform might not have been able to save these old media operators, but they should have at least been giving the freedom to structure their affairs and restructure their business models in an attempt to avoid extinction.  Copps and Pelosi now have to live with the grim reality that it’s tough to throw someone a lifeline after you’ve already sank the ship.

Ben Edelman of the Harvard Business School has just released an interesting new study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives entitled, “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?”  Using data he obtained from a top-10 seller of adult entertainment, Edelman examined adult website subscriptions on the zip code level and found that conservatives seem to be every bit as interested in pornography as liberals. In fact, “Subscriptions [to adult entertainment sites] are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative legislation on sexuality” and “subscriptions are also more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality.”  He also finds that:

In states where more people agree that “Even today miracles are performed by the power of God” and “I never doubt the existence of God,” there are more subscriptions to this service.  Subscriptions are also more prevalent in states where more people agree that “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage” and “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior.”

On the whole, these adult entertainment subscription patterns show a remarkable consistency: all but eleven states have between two and three subscribers to this service per thousand broadband households, and all but four have between 1.5 and 3.5. With interest in online adult entertainment relatively constant across regions, there’s little sign of a major divide.

But it’s not just Internet porn where we see this trend at work.  As I noted in my law review article, “Why Regulate Broadcasting?” we’ve seen a similar trend at work with television. When you look at some of the TV shows that conservatives and religious groups gripe most about, you might be surprised to know that it is conservatives who make those shows as popular as they are!

As Bill Carter of the New York Times reported in a 2004 article, “Many Who Voted for ‘Values’ Still Like Their Television Sin,” Nielsen ratings data shows that in many Republican-leaning “red state” markets, such programs garner higher ratings than in many Democratic-leaning “blue states.” For example, in the counties that constitute the greater Atlanta television market, ABC’s dramatic comedy “Desperate Housewives” was the top-rated show even though nearly 58 percent of voters in those counties voted for President Bush.  Similarly, in the traditionally conservative Salt Lake City market, where President Bush captured over 72 percent of the vote, the top four shows were “C.S.I.,” “C.S.I. Miami,” “E.R.,” and “Desperate Housewives.”

Likewise, in a 2004 column about “The Great Indecency Hoax,”  NY Times columnist Frank Rich noted that the same trend holds in conservative Oklahoma City, where “Desperate Housewives” is more popular than it is in Los Angeles, as well as Kansas City where the show is bigger than it is in New York City.  Rich quoted sociologist Herbert Gans who explained the phenomenon as follows: “For some people it’s a case of ‘I am moral therefore I can watch the most immoral show.'”

Such findings call into question the logic of traditional “community standards”-based regulatory efforts. Indeed, it is unclear how lawmakers can determine the relevant “community standard” for purposes of speech and content regulation when some of the most conservative communities in America are downloading as much porn as Edelman’s study finds, or when conservatives are watching smutty TV in greater numbers than liberals do.

The better approach, as I’ve argued here before, is to replace “community standards” with “household standards.”  That is, it would be optimal if public policy decisions regarding content took into account the extraordinary diversity of citizen / household tastes and left the ultimate decision about acceptable programming to them.  That’s especially the case in light of the fact that less than 32% of U.S. households have any children in them, and those homes that do have children have plenty of tools and methods at their disposal to control objectionable content. Let’s empower parents to make decisions for themselves and their families so that Uncle Sam doesn’t need to play the role of national nanny for all of us.

• Edelman’s mention of porn consumption in Utah reminded me of this passage from Jeff Rosen’s 2004 essay on “The End of Obscenity” (which I discussed in greater detail here):

  three years ago, when a local video retailer in Utah was prosecuted for peddling hard-core pornography, he successfully argued that his products were consistent with what his neighbors were watching on pay-per-view: in an age of nationally distributed hotel pornography, there was little difference between the consumption habits of hotel guests in Salt Lake City or Las Vegas. Pornography is everywhere, suggesting that there is no national consensus against it and no vast disparity from one locale to another.

  Seems that those Utah residents are a horny bunch!  Maybe their new motto should be, “What happens in Utah, stays in Utah.”

Catherine Holahan of Business Week points out that consumer and children’s advocacy groups are looking to expand their efforts to regulate fatty and sugary food advertising in the name of “protecting the children”:

Having successfully lobbied the government to place limits on junk food ads on TV, they now target marketing to kids via the Web. “While there are some rules for TV, there are no rules when you move online,” says Patti Miller, vice-president of children’s advocacy group Children Now and a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s Task Force on Media & Childhood Obesity. “We don’t want to reduce junk food advertising to kids [on TV] and then find that it has just moved to another platform.”

And so another classic case study in regulatory creep is born and the Net gets a little more regulated in the process as Uncle Sam becomes our Super Nanny. What’s that you say? Parents should take more responsibility for what their kids watch and eat? Silly you. Don’t you know that it takes a village to raise a village idiot? Or something like that.