ALL IN THE FAMILY.

It isn't every day that you find Ralph Nader, Trent Lott, Ted Turner, the N.R.A., and now all on the same side of an issue, but last week they were united in condemning the Federal Communications Commission's decision to relax rules regulating the media. The F.C.C. decree expands the number of local TV stations that a company can own and allows companies to own newspapers and TV stations in the same market. Normally, such regulatory changes earn the attention only of K-Street lobbyists and anti-corporate activists. But the F.C.C. ruling, which passed by a 3-2 party-line vote, provoked major bipartisan public opposition, and plots are already being hatched in Congress to overturn it.

At first glance, it's hard to understand what the ruckus is about. When it comes to TV, at least, the ruling will not have a big impact on what most of us get to watch. But in symbolic terms the decision was huge: it suggested that the F.C.C. is happy to smooth the way for the concentration of media market power in fewer and fewer hands.

The familiar argument against such concentration is that, by giving a small number of companies too much control over the flow of information and content, it erodes democracy. But the problem isn't just that a small number of companies run the media business right now; it's that, under the current system, the same companies will likely be running the media business twenty years from now. Media concentration would be fine if there were genuine competition, but, practically speaking, there isn't very much (at least, on the broadcast and programming side), thanks to the regulatory reforms of the early nineties (which, among other things, allowed TV networks to own their own shows, instead of having to buy them from outside studios) and the merger boom of the past few years.

"While it looks like these companies, these oligarchs, compete with each other, they really don't," says Barry Diller, the C.E.O. of USA Interactive and the former head of Universal Studios, which is one of the few remaining producers of independent programming. "What they do is accommodate each other, and smooth things out for each other, while appearing to do otherwise."

In theory, this state of affairs shouldn't be sustainable. If you ignore good programming, you'll pay a price in the marketplace. Fewer people will watch. And your competitors will presumably pick up the shows that you've rejected and will reap the benefits. Eventually, companies that don't put on shows that people like will have to change or go out of business. So you don't need to worry that media concentration will deprive people of real choice. If people want diverse programming, one of the networks will give it to them.

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