The majority of our local commercial media owners are not based locally, and own other stations around the country. Yet, we never hear about what these companies do in other cities and towns, even though these actions tend to represent corporate policy.

In short, that means, if they do it there, they'll probably do it here.

In this case, we have to turn to the Billings, MT daily newspaper to find out what WCIA channel 3's owner, Nexstar, is up to in that city.

Portions of this article aired during the media news segment of the mediageek radio show, on Friday, Oct. 3. The mediageek radio show airs every Friday at 5:30 PM on WEFT 90.1 FM.

Today our local daily student newspaper, the Daily Illini, ran an utterly bland, shallow and barely informed article attempting to assess what affect the FCC's new ownership rules might have on our local media scene.

But aside from interviewing two local media managers and a local media scholar, the author apparently did no research into what the FCC's new rules are, nor what the companies that own our local media asked the FCC to do. Thus, the article's conclusion and title, "Media ownership in C-U not likely to chance with FCC rules," is based entirely on the vague opinions of two local media managers, who cite absolutely no concrete facts about the FCC rules nor what their corporate bosses intend to do if the rules go into effect.