Here, in Washington, there is another Powell who can make news. His name is Michael, he is the son of Colin and, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he is on the edge of rewriting the rules governing mass communications in America.

No one will be surprised if, in the next few months, he opens the door to a new era of deregulation spawning huge media conglomerates that care more about political and economic power than a free, diverse and robust press, more about profit than the public interest.

Yet, Powell is not making news. The reason may be the rush of other news, or it may be the bewildering complexity of the subject itself. For example, we are being told about the incredible advantages of broad- and multi-band (rather than cable) broadcasting, of interactive television and telephones, satellite and digital transmissions and, of course, the Internet.

But do we know whether the new rules, as Powell argues, really will encourage economic growth, increase diversity and, as they lift everything else, presumably improve journalism? Or will they trigger a renewed frenzy of buying and selling corporations, which in the long run has the effect of weakening democracy and journalism?

If this were the automobile business, that would be one thing; but this is a business like no other. It is the one that controls the political and cultural message of the country: the news people watch, read and hear; the programs they enjoy on radio and television; sports they cheer, debates they applaud, politics they support, elections, campaigns, video education. As such, it is an immensely rich and powerful business.

Powell heads a five-member FCC, including two other Republicans and two Democrats. The numbers tilt the FCC decidedly toward the White House view that what's good for George W. Bush is now good for the country. Michael J. Copps, one of the two FCC Democrats, raises an obvious question. "What if we make a mistake?" he asks. "How do you put the genie back in the bottle?" A collection of politicians, led by South Carolina's Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, academics and consumer advocates ask the same question. But, with Congress now solidly in Republican hands, Powell looks out over the political and economic landscape with increasing optimism.

Under his watch, a half-dozen ownership rules are certain to be changed or dropped in coming months. Gone will be rules that:

bar a newspaper from owning a TV station in the same community;

block a media conglomerate from owning two TV networks;

stop a network from owning stations that reach more than 35 percent of the nation's homes;

restrict a broadcaster from owning two TV stations in the same market;

prohibit a corporation from acquiring more than eight radio stations in the same market;

prevent a network from owning more than 30 percent of the national market.

The point of those rules was to stop or limit media monopolization and, in this way, ensure a diversity of voices at the local and national levels. The point of deregulation is to open the marketplace to new economic opportunities and technologies.

Powell and the supporters of deregulation argue that there is no real choice. Revolutionary changes in technology and ownership are sweeping the industry, here and abroad, and the United States must keep pace and command the market, or lose the competitive edge altogether.

Powell advances his argument cautiously or bluntly, depending on his audience. "There must be industry restructuring," he wrote in The Financial Times of London, "to address over-capacity, hyper-competition, weak pricing power and falling revenues." He assured both sides of Congress there would be no radical changes and he'd be "guided exclusively by the public interest."

Few would disagree that some modest degree of change is probably inevitable, given the sweeping economic and technological advances; but there are huge problems in the monopolization of the media, especially in the pursuit of news. Powell describes and dismisses this view as "impassioned histrionics" and "melodramatic." But we know from experience the kind of damage his policies are likely to unleash.

The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, as a matter of political faith, began deregulation of many industries, including mass communication. Radio affiliates of ABC, CBS and NBC splintered away from the networks and dropped their allegiance to hard news. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 continued the move toward deregulation. Those changes were modest compared with what is nowenvisioned, but their impact was widespread.

In radio, for example, Clear Channel Communications and Infinity Broadcasting, which is now part of Viacom/CBS, took advantage of the looser rules to gobble up many small, independent stations. Their hold rose from 130 to more than 1,400 stations, giving the two companies virtually a duopoly position in the market. So, too, did their revenues rise: Clear Channel's now stand at $3.2 billion, Infinity's at $2.1 billion. As their profits skyrocketed, their interests came to focus more on the bottom line than on hard news, which was costly, occasionally controversial and not essential to their preoccupation with a booming business. Station after station drifted toward talk and music. News packages shrunk from five minutes on the hour to a quick minute on the hour.

A recent Gallup poll reveals that 22 percent of Americans get their news every day from talk radio - from such programs as those hosted by Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. Four years ago, it was 11 percent. The trend lines, according to Amy Mitchell, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, are getting worse - "interpretation ahead of the facts, talk rather than information." This was one price of deregulation.

In cable television, the trend lines are the same. Two new networks sprouted in the hothouse environment of 1996. MSNBC, a marriage of Microsoft technology to NBC programming, started in July 1996 and Fox erupted as a new force in cable in October 1996. CNN, which once led the cable field unchallenged, now finds itself in a bitter ratings war with Fox in market-driven journalism. Logically, with three around-the-clock cable news networks rather than one, there should be more news, more voices. In fact, there is more time for news, but the definition of "news" has changed so radically that solid reporting has been essentially replaced by thin, jazzy and much cheaper hot talk.

CNN still turns a profit, but it no longer stands on its own, having been absorbed into such behemoths as TimeWarner and then AOL/TimeWarner. Like CBS, NBC and ABC, it now occupies a small corner of a very large conglomerate. Its news voice is barely heard in the cacophonous roar of profit-taking, except when crises such as 9/11 demand serious attention.

Michael Powell "doesn't care a whit" about news, laments Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America. He cares about the future of 1,600 television stations, 10,400 cable systems, 1,400 radio stations, the 10 million homes receiving direct satellite service and the 100 million Americans with Internet access. A diverse media marketplace of ideas is not on his near horizon.

But shouldn't it be on the near horizon of the media, which would be most directly affected by a new round of deregulation? Shouldn't radio, television and newspapers lead a vigorous national debate on this problem before Powell's vision, or lack thereof, becomes the new law of the land? Clearly yes, especially during this uncertain time in American history, but it's not likely to happen. The media do not want to be in the awkward position of fighting their own viewers and readers, who, according to many polls, support deregulation. And the corporate owners don't want to lose additional market dominance or profits.

Marvin Kalb, a former network correspondent, is senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He wrote this article for Newsday, a Tribune Publishing Co. newspaper.