By GREGORY D. KESICH

MaineToday Media, Inc.

A Portland TV station follows up its local newscast with commentary taped at the station owner's home office in Baltimore, drawing complaints from interest groups who said they had no chance to respond with alternative views.

A local sports talk radio station replaces its nationally syndicated morning show with one produced in Portland, featuring year-round talk about the Red Sox, causing its ratings to climb.

Situations like these that raise questions of how local broadcasters respond to the viewing and listening public will be center stage this Thursday when the Federal Communications Commission holds a rare public hearing at Portland High School.

The hearing is part of an effort by the commission to evaluate how over-the-air broadcasters fulfill their public service responsibilities, at a time when more and more local media are concentrating in fewer hands. This is especially true in Portland, where all of the commercial TV stations and most of the radio stations are owned by out-of-state corporations.

Nationally, the concentration of media has led to calls for stricter regulation by the FCC, and the creation of standards for how much and what kind of local broadcasting should be required as a condition for a license. The industry argues that broadcasters will respond to the marketplace and give the audience as much or as little local broadcasting as it demands.

"We want to see what people in Portland and the surrounding communities think about the local media handling issues of local content," said Jonathan Adelstein, one of the FCC commissioners who will attend the hearing. "I want to know how the out-of-state ownership is affecting people. I'm not prejudging it, but I am concerned."

Portland was chosen as one of six cities in the country for a hearing before the full commission in response to pressure from Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who has been an advocate for a strong government role in policing the airwaves.

"I am concerned about the quality of news and information programming in areas like Portland or anywhere else in our nation that lacks local media ownership," Snowe said in an e-mailed response to a reporter's questions. Snowe said that there should be some way to enforce local content and diversity of viewpoints on media outlets, regardless of where their owners live. She said she would monitor future changes to ownership rules. "The print and broadcast media serve a critical function by exposing Americans to different ways of thinking and independence in ownership is the essence of that function," she said.

Created in 1934, the FCC has enormous powers to regulate everything from low-power FM stations to giant telecommunications companies. The principal known as "localsim" along with competion and diversity, is defined in federal law as a guiding principal the FCC uses to evaluate license holder's service to public interest.

Up until recently, most media was owned locally. But after some rules governing station ownership were relaxed in 1996, the trend of bigger companies buying up local stations intensified.

In 1998, WCSH Channel 6 was bought by Virginia-based Gannett, and WGME Channel 13 was bought by Sinclair Broadcast Group in Baltimore. In 2004, WMTW was purchased by Hearst-Argyle, based in New York. Radio in Portland is dominated by three large conglomerates: Citadel Communications, Saga Communications, and Nassau Broadcasting Partners. According to a study by Free Press, a national media reform group that advocates diverse ownership and universal public media access, those companies own 62 percent of the stations in the market and control 93 percent of the revenue generated. Although not licensed by the FCC, the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram is owned by MaineToday Media, Inc., a subsidiary of the Seattle Times Co., which owns newspapers in Washington and Maine.

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Media conglomeration does not necessarily mean worse service for local customers, said Suzanne Goucher of the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

When one company owns many radio stations in a single market, it does not try to compete with itself, Goucher said. As a result Portland has a greater variety of music formats than it would if all of its stations were independently owned.

Television stations have extended their news programming and have added new local programming such as WCSH's "207" program.

Goucher said big media companies have more resources to invest in technology. She said the required conversion to digital television in 2008 is what drove the local media companies to sell out, not changes to the station ownership rules.

She said the market should dictate what programs go on the air.

"We do not need Washington to come in and tell us how to serve our community," she said. "Maine people will let us know when we don't serve them adequately."

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An example of the market working comes from sports talk radio. Atlantic Coast Radio owns three Portland stations including WJAB, "The Big Jab," making the company's owner, J.J. Jeffrey, the biggest local media owner in the market.

For several years Jeffrey broadcast syndicated talk shows on his sports-focused station, but could not attract an audience. In 2001, he started to put on a local show during the morning drive time, and the response was almost immediate. This year he has added an afternoon show featuring a local host.

"The syndicated people were talking about college basketball, and there was very little interest around here," he said. "People want local, the Red Sox and the Patriots, and they want to know the people (on the air.)"

But media activists say that the broadcast content is too important to be regulated by market forces alone.

An FCC study showed that locally owned television stations aired more local news within their newscasts than corporate owned stations. A study of the decline of children's programming on television in Los Angeles showed a quicker drop in time devoted to children on stations in "duopoly" ownership situations, which are ones in which one owner has two stations within the same market.

"Everything I have ever seen shows that locally owned stations are more likely to do investigative reporting and in depth news than those owned by corporations," said Jon Bartholomew, a national organizer for Common Cause based in Portland. "When things become more corporate you get more funneled-in news."

Bartholomew said that Sinclair raised concerns locally when it aired "The Point by Mark Hyman," a corporate executive who delivered editorial opinions for the company on Chanell 13. Bartholomew said there was no provision for opposing views and the fact that the editorial comments originated in Baltimore made it difficult for people in Maine to respond.

Market forces do not guarantee diversity of opinion, but a democracy requires and exchange of ideas, said Daniel Panici, a University of Southern Maine media studies department professor. While there is a market for popular opinion, he said, positions outside the mainstream do not attract enough of an audience to compete and often don't find a voice in the commercial environment.

Panici said that government regulations may be needed to ensure that all sides of an debate are presented. "We need to do more to elevate the democracy," he said.