Support for Minority Broadcast Ownership Incubation Grows in Reply Comments

Some long-pending proposals to increase broadcast ownership by minorities and women got more support. The Diversity Competition Supporters (DCS) said there was broad consensus in initial comments late last month (CD Dec 28 p3) on a FCC public notice about a recent Media Bureau broadcast ownership report for several of the 47 proposals they want the FCC to consider. In replies posted to docket 09-182 Monday and Friday, more commenters endorsed some of those ideas.

Among the most popular is a proposal to set up an incubator for minority ownership of broadcast assets. DCS said Tribune, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), NAB and National Association of Media Brokers all endorsed the idea in initial comments (http://xrl.us/bn9syv).

NAB backed the DCS’s suggestion that the commission use the “overcoming disadvantages preference” (ODP) standard defining which entities are eligible for the incubator proposal. “Applying ODP to one incentive-based program will allow the Commission to assess and refine its implementation of the standard,” and find out whether it works and should be used in other contexts, NAB said (http://xrl.us/bn9s56). In a jointly-filed reply, Bonneville International and Scranton Times said they also support such an incubator. They also backed setting up a new tax certificate program (http://xrl.us/bn9szm).

Morris Communications also urged the commission to adopt those two proposals. And it backed proposals to ease lending requirements and attribution standards (http://xrl.us/bn9szy). To address ownership diversity, the commission should take up those pro-active measures rather than keep its ban on cross-ownership of newspaper and radio assets “in the name of ownership diversity,” said the owner of radio stations and daily newspapers.

Supporters for reinstating the tax certificate overlook the need to analyze the bureau ownership data first, said the United Church of Christ, Benton Foundation and others (http://xrl.us/bn9s5h). “Congress is no more free than the is the FCC to adopt race- and gender-conscious policies without proper factual analysis,” they said. “These comments underline the need for data analysis to justify race- and gender-conscious policies."

Free Press and the NAA traded critiques of each others’ initial comments. The NAA “severely downplayed the likely impact of the Commission’s proposed rule changes in light of the Form 323 Summary Report data,” Free Press said (http://xrl.us/bn9s36. NAA’s own comments identified two minority-owned stations that could “be sold to a newspaper in the same market, Free Press said. “We cannot afford to lose even two stations."

The NAA shot back in its replies, saying Free Press manipulated and mischaracterized the bureau’s ownership data. Free Press “ignores the fact that the vast majority of minority-owned stations in the Top 20 markets do not offer any local news programming,” the NAA said (http://xrl.us/bn9s4n). “Free Press inexplicably excluded 21 stations from the total number of minority-owned television stations because they are in Puerto Rico,” the association said. “Free Press provided absolutely no reason why they should not count toward the total number of stations.”