FCC Media Ownership NOI Asks About ‘Consumer Satisfaction’

The FCC wants to know if consumers are satisfied with media they use, and how to measure that satisfaction. Those are among the more than 100 questions on online, print, radio and TV media asked in a notice of inquiry on the 2010 quadrennial review. It was released Tuesday afternoon, with questions largely along the lines of what had been anticipated (CD May 18 p4). Some questions about measuring the extent to which broadcasters serve their community raised the hackles of Commissioner Robert McDowell, who, like some industry and public interest officials (CD April 2 p1), suggested a rulemaking would have been possible without an inquiry.

Meanwhile, work continues at the FCC on requests for proposals for about 10 studies on ownership to be conducted by outside researchers, agency officials said. Those requests should be issued soon, they said. They likely will seek responses in 30 days and suggest research ought to be completed in about three months, a commission official said. FCC staffers may conduct several more studies themselves, another agency official said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.

Several questions in the competition section of the notice asked about consumer satisfaction. “Because broadcast radio and television content is available for free to end users, we cannot use price in analyzing competition for listeners and viewers. Accordingly, we seek comment on potential proxies for consumer welfare,” said the notice, available at http://xrl.us/bhmz27. “If consumer satisfaction is an important metric for assessing the state of our competition goal with regard to consumers, how do we measure it?” The commission could examine consumer satisfaction through surveys, it said, asking how useful they'd be. “Are there more easily measurable proxies for consumer satisfaction, such as media utilization?” the notice stated. “What is the best way to measure consumer satisfaction among particular demographic groups?” The notice also asked about minority and female ownership of media assets.

Like other recent commission proceedings on media, this one asked about the Internet’s effect. “In what ways does competition from the Internet affect the financial condition of broadcasters? What are the consequences of the current challenges that traditional media face in monetizing their content on the Internet?” the commission asked. An alternative to measuring localism regarding consumers is to gauge local programming inputs, the agency said. The number of “local journalists, the number of local news bureaus, or expenditures on local news and public affairs” were mentioned: “Are such inputs a valid proxy for the responsiveness of local programming?”

Would measuring “civic engagement” such as “voter turnout or civic knowledge be useful to measure achievement of the localism goal?” the notice asked. “How should we account for new media in our analysis, both in terms of the metrics we adopt and in terms of the impact of new media on traditional media,” it continued. “How does the Internet affect our evaluation of whether the goal of localism is being served? While not all consumers have broadband Internet access, information first reported on the Internet -- through local blogs, websites, listservs and similar online sources -- may be picked up by the traditional media and further disseminated to non-users of the Internet."

The notice also asked about the National Broadband Plan’s relationship to the quadrennial review. “Does access to broadband affect our policy goals? How does access to audio and video content available over broadband factor into our competition analysis? How does access to broadband affect our diversity goals?” With the plan finding mobile services are increasingly important to consumers, “should the Commission’s policy goals to foster mobile services impact media ownership rules?” the notice asked. Although TV spectrum reallocation wasn’t specifically asked about, broadcast and other commenters probably will discuss it in their responses to the notice, commission officials said. Responses are due 30 days after the notification of the document is given in the Federal Register, replies 15 days later.

The NAB continues to back “modest media ownership reform,” a spokesman said. Senior Vice President Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, a foe of media consolidation, said the regulator is putting “too high a priority in taking action” now. Instead, he said in a written statement, “it should be devoting much more attention on fixing the mess left by the Bush-era FCC which issued a poorly-supported opinion on cross-ownership in the prior quadrennial review. That decision is under attack in Court, and the Commission should fix that decision before starting work on a new one.”

The last two rounds of ownership reviews were poorly handled, Commissioner Michael Copps said. “Hopefully, this third time will be the charm.” McDowell finds some questions in the notice “disquieting” in what they ask and in their “premises,” he said. McDowell is concerned about the suggestion the regulator could measure civic engagement through voter turnout to evaluate broadcaster localism, he said. “The possibility of the government monitoring core protected speech should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cherishes liberty,” he said. “I similarly question the possible focus on counting the number of journalists employed at broadcast stations.”