Media Ownership Replies Draw Some New Industry Filings

Disney, Dish Network, NBCUniversal and NCTA weighed in for the first time on the FCC’s media ownership rulemaking, with replies reaching different conclusions. Disney questioned the very need for the review given the “realities of today’s market” that include the availability of new media. Dish, among those seeking changes to retransmission consent rules, wants the forthcoming order to bar separately owned stations in the same market from jointly negotiating retrans deals. Comcast’s NBCUniversal said local news sharing agreements shouldn’t be attributable under ownership rules. If required, that could bar LNS deals in some circumstances. The NCTA said a question in December’s rulemaking notice (CD Dec 23 p1) about extending carriage rights to a type of low-power TV station that must meet the same rules as regular broadcasters raised its concern.

Such Class A stations can’t get rights to demand carriage on cable systems, other than the “limited” ones they already have, the NCTA said (http://xrl.us/bm4end). “Tying carriage rights to a particular Class A station’s programming content, as proposed in comments filed by the Diversity and Competition Supporters, would only compound the serious First Amendment issues raised by mandatory carriage generally.” NBCUniversal, controlled by NCTA’s largest member, said it agreed “with the unanimous view of commenting broadcasters” that LNS deals let “stations do more with less.” Those who want to expand attribution rules to include such accords are seeking rules with “a serious constitutional dimension” and “a host of practical difficulties,” the broadcast-TV network said (http://xrl.us/bm4eny). “The type of LNS arrangement with which NBC is familiar provides a number of participating media outlets with access to raw video footage that each outlet can use, at its discretion, in developing and reporting its own news stories."

Dish opposed other types of asset sharing deals including joint sales, shared services and local marketing agreements. They “allow broadcast stations to circumvent the current media ownership rules,” the DBS company said (http://xrl.us/bm4eoa). It asked the FCC “to clarify and enforce its rules to ensure that they do not allow stations that are purportedly non-attributable to each other to act as a single entity to the detriment of the consuming public.” Disney wondered about the “misplaced” wisdom of a “narrow” focus on broadcast ownership rules, without taking a stance on how they should change as it has sold TV and radio stations in recent years. “Given the proliferation and increased pace of adoption of other, competing forms of media, we believe that the FCC would be better served to broaden its inquiry to consider the full panoply of challenges facing broadcasters, ways to incent ownership of over-the-air broadcast stations, and whether some elements of the overall regulatory regime have become outdated,” the broadcaster said (http://xrl.us/bm4ex8).

Other replies posted Wednesday in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bm4emz) reacted to issues raised in initial comments (CD March 7 p3). They included whether to keep or relax a bar on cross ownership of radio or TV stations and daily newspapers within a market and whether to allow in more instances one company to own more than one TV outlet in a market. NAB sees the record as “void of evidence showing that the broadcast ownership rules remain necessary to promote localism” and said (http://xrl.us/bm4epb) ownership rules don’t increase diversity. For Free Press, there’s “little basis in the realities of the marketplace” to call for relaxing ownership rules.

It would be better for a station that can’t produce its own newscasts “to go out of business and sell its spectrum to a new entrant in the market, or to relinquish its spectrum so that it may be put to a better use in the community or in consumers’ media consumption habits,” Free Press said (http://xrl.us/bm4eps). TV stations, “widely” using asset-sharing deals, should find a buyer if they're “truly failing” or seek a failing-station waiver, said (http://xrl.us/bm4eyz) the Communications Workers of America union and seven groups that oppose media consolidation including Common Cause, Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ. They said TV stations shouldn’t be “entering into covert sharing agreements.”