“Despite all the talk you may hear today about the threat to newspapers from the Internet and new technologies, today’s order actually deals with something quite old-fashioned,” Mr. Copps said. “Powerful companies are using political muscle to sneak through rule changes that let them profit at the expense of the public interest.”

And Robert M. McDowell, a Republican commissioner, was sharply critical of the cable restrictions.

“The cap is out of date, is bad public policy and is not needed in today’s public market,” he said. He called the cable rule “archaic industrial policy” that would surely be struck down by an appeals court, as an earlier rule was six years ago.

Although Mr. Martin appears to have won a high-stakes battle within the commission over some of the most important proposals of his tenure, he has expended significant political capital and made political enemies of powerful industry groups and influential lawmakers.

For opposite reasons, both proposals approved on Tuesday have been criticized by industry. The Newspaper Association of America has attacked the proposal for being too modest, and said that Mr. Martin did not go far enough.

“Today’s vote is only a baby step in the actions needed to maintain the vitality of local news, in print and over-the-air, in all communities across the nation,” the president of the Newspaper Association, John F. Sturm, said. “Eliminating the cross-ownership ban completely would enhance localism by enabling broadcasters to increase local news and would not distract from the diversity of viewpoints available to local audiences.”

The cable television industry has said it has repeatedly been an unfair target of Mr. Martin, and that his efforts to regulate the industry are at odds with the broader policies of the Bush administration to remove or lessen regulations.

Over the last year, the commission has approved a series of proposals over the objections of the cable television industry, including one last December to force municipalities to accelerate the local approval process for the telephone companies to offer video services in new markets. Another one last October struck down thousands of contracts that gave individual cable companies exclusive rights to provide service to an apartment building.