A reader responding to my comments below on media consolidation says to let the market handle it. "Anything as bloated and arrogant as Lee Enterprises should be ripe for picking," he (or she) writes. The trouble is, that doesn't apply to TV, which is governed by scarce and valuable licenses issued by the federal government. Want to compete in that field? Better have enough capital to go after an existing station and wrest away its FCC license. As the number of companies who own the broadcast media gets smaller, and as those companies get bigger, it keeps getting harder to put together that kind of capital.

Maybe broadband technology will break up the broadcast monopoly, but you can be certain the big boys are working on locking that up, too.