Presiding over the landmark Microsoft antitrust case, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson made international headlines when he compared Microsoft's market power to the hegemony enjoyed by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil a century ago. But perhaps another, less chronicled story actually serves as a better model for what is happening today and what may yet take place in the years to come. Way back during the birth of broadcasting, a largely forgotten but portentous battle raged between a lone inventor and the indomitable mogul at the helm of the first electronic media-age monopoly. The conflict differed sharply from the Rockefeller case, which involved the supply of a physical product-oil-as well as the system for piping and transporting this commodity. By contrast, the primary product in broadcasting was information, broadly defined. And the primary issue at hand wasn't pricing but innovation itself.

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