FCC Ownership Rules Ignore Current Reality, Says NAB's Timmerman

With its quadrennial review media ownership order, the FCC is providing “an impressive imitation of an ostrich with its head in the sand,” said NAB Senior Deputy General Counsel Jerianne Timmerman in a blog post Tuesday. The quadrennial review order was published in the Federal Register Tuesday (see 1611010027). “The FCC again asserted that 'non-broadcast video programming distributors' are not meaningful competitors in local TV markets, virtually ignoring a host of 20th and 21st century technologies (including cable, satellite, mobile devices and the internet) to retain its local TV ownership restriction,” Timmerman said. By maintaining the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership (NBCO) ban, “the FCC essentially concluded that little or nothing of import has changed in the news industry and the marketplace position of print newspapers and broadcast stations for the past 41 years -- a nonsensical position on its face,” Timmerman said. She criticized the NBCO rule as out of date and arbitrary, since it only applies to papers “published” four or more days a week. “It borders on the absurd to contend that the viewpoint diversity concerns supposedly sufficient to ban the common ownership of a station and a newspaper publishing a print edition four days a week magically disappear when the newspaper publishes online every day but publishes in print only three days a week,” said Timmerman. Though the FCC touted the order as slightly relaxing the NBCO ban by providing a waiver process, that addition provides minimal change, Timmerman said. “The exception for failed/failing outlets, and the new waiver standard for newspaper/broadcast combinations not 'unduly harm[ing] viewpoint diversity,' fail to go beyond pre-existing waiver opportunities for broadcasters and newspaper owners,” she said. “The FCC has done nothing substantive here.” The agency didn't comment.