Media Ownership Rule Stasis Since Telecom Act Surprised Furchtgott-Roth
That the FCC has made such incremental changes to media ownership rules since 1996 was a surprise to Harold Furchtgott-Roth, who became a Republican commissioner the next year. Just-departed Democratic member Michael Copps worries more mergers and acquisitions will continue.
Ex-GOP Commissioner Deborah Tate agreed with Copps at a Catholic University event that minorities own a small slice of broadcast properties, but she said that appears to be because of investment decisions rather than regulations favoring incumbents. Former Media Bureau Chief Donna Gregg, who moderated Wednesday’s event, said her recent contact with executives and regulators from other countries points up how the U.S.’s media business is unlike most of the rest of the world in that it’s largely privatized.
A decade ago, Furchtgott-Roth would never have predicted the status quo of media ownership regulations would be largely unchanged now, he said. “Here we are, 11 years later” after two terms of a Republican administration and three years into a Democratic presidency, “and media ownership rules are still here, largely unchanged. Who would have thought?” said the economist who often opposes government regulation. He said he agrees with Copps’ observations about the “bleeding of journalism, a debasement of journalism” and loss of jobs in the industry. Unlike Copps’ view, Furchtgott-Roth doesn’t blame the state of journalism on “a failure of the commission to have tougher ownership rules,” he said. Lack of deregulation has meant “fewer opportunities, it has made the media environment much less vibrant, and frankly I think competitive than it should be,” he continued.
The FCC is “asking pretty much the same questions we've been asking for 10 years” on media ownership, Copps said of the current quadrennial review of rules that was due to have been completed in 2010. “We're still talking about the same newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule that Chairman [Kevin] Martin was pushing when he was chairman” and “so we haven’t made a lot of progress,” Copps said. Furchtgott-Roth noted the “tenuous” state of media ownership law under the 1996 Telecom Act, since the FCC sets limits that aren’t dictated by the legislation.
It’s curious that the FCC holds field hearings and pays for studies on media ownership but doesn’t do that on most other proceedings, Furchtgott-Roth said. “There should be field hearings,” Copps responded, because the commission gets “a lot of valuable information out of the hearings we've had” from people of color, those with disabilities and others who don’t usually participate in the agency’s rulemakings. Furchtgott-Roth replied that he thinks “getting commissioners outside of Washington is very, very healthy,” so his objection is that it was only done for media ownership. Tate said speakers at field hearings in Nashville, Tenn., where she’s lived, were “bused in” from other areas, which she said reduced opportunities for locals to speak.
Like in Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Haslam wants to scale back the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, Tate said of the FCC that “we also need to be humble regulators.” On the low portion of radio and TV stations owned by people of color, “we can’t always say that the percentages mean everything,” she continued. “Is it a business which people want to invest in?” she asked. In radio, the market worked to counter the effects of consolidation, with listenership at chain-owned stations declining in some cases and Clear Channel Communications shedding many properties, Tate said. “People were starting to vote with their buttons or their knobs or their feet, so all of those conglomerates are half the size they were when I was at the FCC.” Clear Channel’s divestitures meant the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council got stations to use for training purposes, Tate said. “Conglomerates got large, radio stations got large, and the market spoke."
Recent broadcast and cable consolidation worries Copps, who cited Scripps and Sinclair buying TV stations, Cumulus buying Citadel, and Comcast buying control of NBCUniversal. There’s no question consolidation continues, he said. Shared services agreements among separately owned TV stations in the same market means ownership limits “are kind of being worked around” and SSAs are “just another word for media consolidation,” Copps said. “I see disturbing signs new media is traveling down the same road” as cable and broadcasters, he said in recommending there be a discussion of public-interest responsibilities but not rules for Internet companies. “How can we let the Internet go down the same road: Control by gatekeepers or tollbooths” as traditional U.S. media, he asked. “What does the public interest mean in terms of the Internet?”