Lobbying on FCC media ownership rules continues, as what’s expected to...

Lobbying on FCC media ownership rules continues, as what’s expected to be the final comment cycle (CD Dec 29 p1) before a draft order is recirculated ended Jan. 4. Those seeking more deregulation than is in the draft circulated Nov. 14, including the Newspaper Association of America, reported in docket 09-182 visiting the agency in recent days (http://xrl.us/boa4d8). Meanwhile the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters and Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance continued seeking more regulation than is in the draft. Commissioner Robert McDowell said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/boa4d4) that the agency shouldn’t limit joint sales agreements, something the draft does for JSAs. (See separate report above in this issue.) Media General wants exemption from any restrictions on JSAs where the station brokering ads for the other broadcaster in the agreement provides local news and information to its partner, CEO George Mahoney wrote in a handwritten letter to an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a copy of which is in the docket (http://xrl.us/boa4va). With the agency “poised to conclude” JSAs “should be deemed attributable ownership stakes,” the commission should “take the additional step of ensuring” that those and any other sharing deals that allow coordinated retransmission consent negotiations for multiple stations in a market don’t “harm competition and consumers,” ITTA told (http://xrl.us/boa4gz) the aide to Rosenworcel. There’s a “complete lack of any potential harm” that “liberalization of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule” would have on ownership diversity, a lawyer for NAA reported telling an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. NABOB Executive Director Jim Winston told Genachowski’s aide of its continued opposition to ownership-rule relaxation without developing a record on the potential impact on ownership opportunities for minorities and women, and said doing so wouldn’t meet the requirements of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2011 remand of the last media ownership order (http://xrl.us/boa4f8). It would “be very difficult for a standalone radio station to compete with a radio group of multiple stations in a market if that radio group owner also owned the daily newspaper,” Winston reported a month late that he and other NABOB directors told Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The draft order has been said to allow common ownership of radio stations and daily newspapers within a market. Because auto advertisers like to buy ads in the automotive sales supplements that dailies run weekly, “it would be very difficult for a standalone station to compete with a combined daily newspaper-radio combination,” Winston and executives from Access.1 Communications, Inner City Broadcasting and Taxi Productions told Clyburn. The notice covered no arguments not made in previous on-time filings by the association, so its lateness didn’t prejudice any party, Winston wrote (http://xrl.us/boa4gt).