By now, some TV station owners may be rubbing their antennas together in glee if they have seized their chance to acquire a second station in local television markets.

The Federal Communications Commission voted in August to ease its “one-to-a-market” rule, and began accepting requests earlier this month. The agency braced for a stampede because there is a first-come, first-served element to the bids for “duopoly,” as the common ownership of two TV stations is called. Not every bid can prevail, because the FCC wants at least eight different owners to remain in a local market to assure diversity.

Big TV station-groups already in the largest markets have the most to gain. There are more potential duopoly partners in big cities, and there are more advertising dollars at stake.

Who will win, and who will lose? The FCC recently announced how the process will work to discourage any shoving matches at the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh where applications are filed. (Mellon deposits the accompanying fees, then sends the applications to the FCC).

At the head of the line are stations that already have business dealings, often in the form of “local marketing agreements.” Under such arrangements, one station handles sales and programming for a second station in the same market.

Just a year ago, the FCC wanted to crack down on local marketing agreements that were viewed as circumventing the “one-to-a-market” rule, but a sharp rebuke from a few powerful members of Congress put the agency in retreat.

Now the FCC says it will treat local marketing agreements as if the two stations had a “single voice” all along. It’s the equivalent of a free pass to companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. and Clear Channel Communications Inc., which used the marketing agreements to grow rapidly in the 1990s.

Duopoly will be more of a crapshoot for other applicants. If the FCC receives more proposals than a market can sustain, the agency will break the logjam in one of two ways. First, the agency will give same-day applicants a chance to work out a solution among themselves. If that fails, the FCC will process the applications by random selection.

What a way to determine market share!

Many broadcasters urged the FCC to relax its local ownership rules because they want to achieve certain economies of scale. I looked at my hometown market of Jacksonville, Fla., to see what duopolies might achieve.

Gannett Co., which already owns the NBC affiliate, said it will buy the ABC affiliate in Jacksonville if it gets FCC approval. Gannett may merge the two stations’ news operations, a spokeswoman said.

The UPN and Fox affiliates in town may also wind up with a single owner. Clear Channel, owner of the Fox affiliate, already operates the UPN station under a local marketing agreement.

If Gannett and Clear Channel win duopolies, they’ll constitute two of the eight “voices” counted by the FCC in the local market. The remaining six voices will belong to a CBS affiliate, a WB affiliate, a religious-format station, a PBS station and two stations in Brunswick, Ga.

The duopoly race has created fresh incentive for small broadcasters to sell now. “The handwriting is on the wall for those of us who own one or two stations,” says the owner of a Southwest station, who spoke privately because he is engaged in talks with prospective buyers. “The thought that we could build a business serving our local community is now tested by the economic realities of deregulation. Once again, public interest has been replaced by stockholder interest.”

Meaning: If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. That’s what Hollywood decided after losing several regulatory battles to broadcast networks.

The broadcast lobby long has been the envy of Hollywood. With considerable success, the broadcasters have argued that they must be unshackled to compete with new competitors like cable television, satellite TV services and the Internet.

(Meanwhile, some major studios and movie theater companies still answer to the Justice Department about their film distribution because of antitrust decrees that are a half-century old.)

Early in the 1990s, the major networks succeeded in overturning rules that had barred ABC, CBS and NBC from taking a financial interest in studio-produced TV series. After losing that war, studios sought alliances with TV networks or station owners to assure an outlet for their product.

Walt Disney Co. acquired Capital Cities/ABC. Now Viacom Inc. is merging with CBS Corp. in a $42 billion transaction. Although they still own studios, Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone are received as broadcasters when they visit Washington now.

The duopoly ruling prompted the merger talks between CBS and Viacom. The two companies own TV stations in six of the same markets; if they win approval for these duopolies, the FCC says it won’t count the second station in each market toward the national audience cap, which is set at 35 percent.

The Washington-based Media Access Project has attacked the FCC’s logic as “hopelessly flawed” because it argues that duopolies are bound to strengthen the broadcaster’s national clout. The criticism was part of a petition to the commission to reconsider the way it counts duopoly stations for national ownership purposes.

The quickened pace of consolidation has caused mild consternation for some lawmakers and regulators. In the duopoly proceeding, the FCC spoke of the need to act expeditiously perhaps because of the criticism that has been heaped on the agency.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, was one of the powerful members of Congress who rebuked the FCC last year for considering stricter rules in TV ownership. Yet McCain, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee (and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination), voiced reservations this month about mega-mergers in the telecommunications industry.

“Most Americans tend to view increased concentration of control as a negative, and, unfortunately, this is often the case, at least for the average consumer,” McCain said, opening a hearing into the impact of those mergers.

Still, there is little evidence that Congress or the FCC will curb mergers in the media and entertainment arena. The hand-wringing is left mainly to public interest groups and academics, who alternate between legal fencing and open frustration.

In the words of E. Joshua Rosenkranz, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law:

“There are five or six blobs that are just eating up everything.”

Kathryn Harris is a columnist for Bloomberg News.