The United Church of Christ cautioned against concluding that radio...

The United Church of Christ cautioned against concluding that radio stations don’t augment the diversity of voices in a local market. If the FCC does so, it will “substantially undermine its ultimate goal of adopting rules that promote media ownership diversity for radio,” UCC said in an ex parte filing in dockets 09-182 and 07-294 about a teleconference with its attorney and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake (http://bit.ly/VLwb7m). Significant studies, including several Future of Music Coalition studies, “provide evidence that radio stations do, in fact, offer a viewpoint regardless of whether they report original news.” UCC said there are no newspapers owned by people of color in the U.S. that are subject to the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership (NBCO) rule, and thus “it was unlikely that changes in the NBCO would result in improvements in the provision of news by owners of color through joint ownership.” Under the quadrennial review provision, the FCC “has the discretion to retain the ownership rules that promote diversity of viewpoint on radio,” it said.