Dr. Danilo Yanich of the University of Delaware’s Local TV News Media Project analyzed two years of televised newscasts from five major media markets -- - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Albuquerque -- and found that media concentration does correlate with less local news coverage.

 Yanich and his research team specifically looked at "duopoly" stations, as well as whether they were owned and operated by broadcast networks, along with other ownership characteristics. These questions are of particular concern to public interest groups like the Consumer Federation of America, whose 300 member organizations across the country have been raising the concern about the decline in the quality and amount of local news coverage and they want to know why and what can be done about it.

Yanich used as his methodology content analysis of actual local television news footage, which was obtained from videotaped television newscasts recorded by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in 1998 and 2002.  In particularly, his research focused on five media markets -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Albuquerque – because this enabled his research team to examine an important aspect of media ownership: duopoly.  Duopoly is defined as one firm owning two television stations in the same market.

His research found that “ownership does matter” in the production of news, and particularly local news, on local TV news broadcasts.  Yanich found statistically significant relationships between ownership types and total news content and local news content.  In general, independently held-stations (stations that were neither owned-and-operated by a network nor part of a duopoly) broadcast more local content on their newscasts than those stations that were either (1) owned-and-operated and part of  duopoly; (2) owned-and-operated only; or (3) part of a duopoly only.

 Yanich concludes that consolidated media ownership negatively affects the production of local content on local television stations.  Thus, he recommends that the FCC re-consider any relaxation of the rules regarding how many television stations can be owned by a single firm and whether a single firm can own both a television station and a newspaper in the same market.