ACA, Public Interest Groups Oppose Recon of Ownership Rules That Cox Media, NMA Back

Small cable operators and groups opposed to media consolidation on one side, and media allies on the other disagreed whether the FCC should reconsider newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership and other media-holdings restrictions as NAB wants. The association and Nexstar petitioned for reconsideration, which the American Cable Association opposed (see 1701250054). About a dozen groups including unions and led by the United Church of Christ opposed such deregulation, but it was backed by Cox Media Group and the News Media Alliance (NMA). Filings were posted Tuesday and Wednesday in docket 14-50 and the subject of an NMA news release Thursday. The UCC, Communications Workers of America, National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Prometheus Radio Project and others said broadcasters raised no new facts not already considered by the regulator. "The US Court of Appeals, which has retained jurisdiction over the remand in Prometheus III [the court case is named after that group] directed the Commission to assess the impact of any repeal or modification of an ownership rule on opportunities for station ownership by women and minorities. The Commission has conducted no such assessment" here, said the consolidation foes. "Neither petition mentions, much less challenges, the Commission’s threshold determination that it is premature to change the media ownership rules before it has had a chance to evaluate the 'dramatic effect' that spectrum auctions will have on the broadcast marketplace." Comments related to FCC plans for shuffling TV stations after the incentive auction were the subject of separate filings posted this week (see 1701260033). Cox Media sees the rules retaining long-time hurdles to one company owning a broadcaster and daily paper in the same market as a "veritable museum of the way things used to be." When the 1996 Telecom Act mandated periodic review of media ownership rules, Congress didn't "expect the endless cycle of delay, court appeals, and regulatory inertia that have characterized the past two decades of biennial and then quadrennial reviews," said the broadcaster. Nix "this analog-era rule once and for all," wrote NMA. "In the remarkable seven years it took the FCC to conduct its 2014 quadrennial review, the Commission compiled a record clearly demonstrating that the cross-ownership ban is a musty anachronism that undermines the very values for which it was promulgated. Yet, inexplicably, the Commission concluded its review in August 2016 by deciding to retain the rule in essentially the same form in which it was adopted in 1975."