The current record on how cross-media ownership would...

The current record on how cross-media ownership would affect minorities is “inadequate,” said officials from the United Church of Christ Office of Communication and the Institute of Public Representation in a meeting Monday with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s media aide Maria Kirby, said an ex parte filing released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1khXnFx). The FCC will need more hard data to meet the standards for such rules imposed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Prometheus II decision, said the groups. The commission must “conduct analysis of the impact of its media ownership rules on women and people of color before it takes any action to relax those rules,” said the filing. The commission’s previously collected Form 323 data doesn’t provide such analysis because it’s disorganized and out of date, the filing said. “Only a data collection of the intensity of the Critical Information Needs studies would be adequate,” said the filing. The commission should base its decisions in the 2010 or 2014 Quadrennial Review on data collected from such studies, the filing said. Commission inaction on joint sales agreements and shared service agreements (SSAs) “invites broadcasters to quickly usher through as many of these arrangements as possible and then, in the event of later Commission action, to grandfather in the transactions, creating perverse incentives.” The FCC should make a tentative finding that SSAs undermine the goals of the ownership rules and provide notice of upcoming action, subjecting parties to possible unwinding of their arrangements, the filing said.