It may be weeks before broadcasters, networks, newspaper publishers and the cable and radio industry decide whether the new media studies released by the Federal Communications Commission are good news or bad news. The 12 studies were prepared to help provide data to the agency as it begins the Herculean task of reviewing all its media ownership rules. A cursory pass reveals enough to annoy and cheer all parties and all sides in the media consolidation debate regarding ownership concentration and diversity, advertising prices and monopoly behavior.

Jeff Chester, the head of the Center for Digital Democracy, denounced most of the studies as window dressing by Michael Powell, FCC chairman, and his Media Bureau director, Ken Ferree. Chester has claimed they are determined to end media ownership rules. He cited a lack of ?intellectual integrity? in the studies, which found that, despite increased ownership concentration, there is more diversity of voices, at least in terms of entertainment, in TV and radio.

Powell's legal adviser Susan Eid took issue with Chester. ?It's disappointing that Mr. Chester ignored the substance of the studies and instead chose to attack career public servants,? Eid said. ?In the future, we hope the debate will be focused on the facts and the development of sound public policy.?

Through a spokesperson, Ferree said, ?If our only goal was deregulation, we would have a done a half-hearted effort ? fewer studies in less time spending less money.?

One crucial study by Joel Waldfogel at the University of Pennsylvania could have enormous implications for the way the FCC counts independent ?voices? in a market. He surprisingly found that consumers substitute the Internet for other media outlets, such as broadcast, cable and newspapers. However, in an interview Waldfogel said, ?There's no complete substitution among outlets.? He noted that he'd found in other studies that if you take away certain urban newspapers, it affects black voter turnout. Waldfogel said the FCC needs to examine the difference between diversity of voices in entertainment and that in news, and what it means for consumer behavior.

Comments on the studies are due at the FCC in 60 days.

Another study asked whether there was an empirical connection between the bias that a TV station took on a story and the slant on that story presented in a newspaper owned by the same company. An FCC source said the agency may want to delve deeper into this issue. Among the parties that could be affected would be the Tribune Group and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

THE NEXT QUESTION:

• How will the FCC use these studies on newspaper-TV cross-ownership?
• Will the studies that show networks airing more of their own TV shows rather than other studios' programs affect how the FCC will judge the network ownership cap?

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