As early as this week, News Corp. and Liberty Media may announce a major swap. Liberty reportedly will give up its 19% interest in News Corp. in exchange for News Corp.’s 39% interest in DirecTV, a few other assets, and $550 million cash. The transaction, which would have favorable tax implications for each party, would be a victory for both John Malone, who controls Liberty, and the Murdoch family, which controls News Corp.

The News Corp. deal is one of several recent large broadcast transactions. Last month, Thomas Lee and Bain agreed to purchase Clear Channel, the largest broadcast radio holding company in America, which is controlled primarily by the Mays family of Texas, for nearly $19 billion. The private equity firms reportedly will divest some of Clear Channel’s holdings.

These and other transactions illustrate three obvious facts about the nature of the broadcast industry in particular, and business in general, in America. First, the motivation to invest in the broadcast industry is the same as in any other industry: to make a reasonable profit. Second, the most efficient size of a broadcast firm is not necessarily gigantic. Third, these broadcast transactions will undergo detailed and timeconsuming regulatory review.

In contrast, Google’s acquisition of YouTube last month will receive scant regulatory review because these are new Internet companies rather than legacy-regulated broadcast companies.

The motivation to invest in the broadcast sector is not to control the coverage of news or to dictate forms of entertainment or to restrict the availability of content to the American public. As a practical matter, no company in the world today has that capability. Americans find news, information, and entertainment from countless sources, no sizable share of which is controlled by any individual firm. So even if a firm had the nefarious intent of controlling information, it would not succeed.

News Corp. and Clear Channel invested in programming from a wide range of viewpoints. They invested in diverse content not because they are schizophrenic (the owners have strong political views) but because broadcasting is most profitable when it reflects the interests and tastes of audiences.

Investors enter and exit the broadcast industry as financial conditions and expectations change. In the past generation, all of the major broadcast networks and many of the major broadcast station holding groups have changed hands. Buyers and sellers had financial motives rather than visions of domination and control. The incentives to buy and sell broadcast properties are little different today than 30 years ago.

The recent experiences of News Corp. and Clear Channel show that growing bigger is not always better, even in the broadcast industry. The range of outlets that each firm controls will shrink after the transactions. As in any industry, efficiency is the keystone of success.

Two of the largest broadcast corporations face divestitures not as the result of government regulation but as a consequence of rational business decisions. These transactions beg the question of whether there is a need any longer for special regulation of broadcast ownership. For decades, our government has reduced regulation of ownership in many industries from banking to trucking to electricity. Ownership of broadcasting, hardly a growth industry, remains regulated in detail.

Paradoxically, for the past decade, the anti-broadcast-consolidation movement has fretted over the holdings of the Mays and the Murdoch families. Those examples, hollow in their initial construction, still make no sense today.

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have ample authority to limit any anticompetitive behavior by any company. Additional rules to restrict broadcast ownership will do little to help consumers and much to harm businesses and ultimately the consumers they serve.

Broadcast and other businesses serve their customers well not because the government instructs them in such matters, but because meeting customer demands is essential to any company’s survival. The media ownership rules, if they ever had a useful purpose, should now be abolished.

A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached at hfr@furchtgott-roth.com.