The Federal Communications Commission under chairman Kevin Martin's leadership has announced it will limit the amount of homes one cable system operator can reach to 30 percent of the country. Given the current state of the industry, that's a good thing. This is Martin's way of slapping the wrists of an oligopoly that has had no problem gouging consumers on cable rates for years.

Cable giants such as Comcast and TimeWarner could have avoided the FCC caps had they been more flexible in offering plans for consumers to pay for the cable networks they want -- certainly there's some kind of a la carte formula that can work. This is where the business will eventually land anyway. Other means of distribution -- we're talking Internet here -- are already grooming a generation to pay only for what they want, when they want it. Cable operators need to get in front of this concept or eventually face extinction.

Martin and his Republican compadres on the FCC have decided to permit cross ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the top 20 markets; that, for the time being, also seems to be a sensible decision. Everyone who toils at newspapers knows they've become rotten places to work -- and, for news-gathering institutions to continue to be viable, they're going to have to spread their costs over multiple platforms.

A few years down the pike though, all of the current regulations will be obsolete. It's hard to see how any old media player is going to have a monopoly or be part of an oligopoly given the digital revolution and the way it radically reduces cost - and increases ease - of publishing information.