trio of powerful senators asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the state of independent programming.

Media-consolidation critic Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) teamed up with Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Antitrust Subcommittee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) on the letter to acting comptroller general Gene Dodaro to ask for a GAO study, prompted by their concerns that media consolidation has squeezed out independent programmers.

Independent programmers made that same argument during Federal Communications Commission field hearings on media ownership, as well as at hearings on network neutrality, arguing that the Internet was their best hope of finding a place to distribute their content.

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