FCC's Diversity Committee Shifts Gears to Address COVID-19

The FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment has had to adjust its focus to grapple with COVID-19 and its outsize effects on minorities and small business owners, members told its Friday meeting. “We’ve had to tweak our plans,” said Beasley Broadcast CEO and Access to Capital working group head Caroline Beasley. “Getting access to capital to buy a broadcast property in the world of COVID is literally impossible.” The pandemic “illustrated as nothing else has the importance of connecting communities,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Plans for a Nov. 6 Access to Capital Symposium that was to include advice for would-be minority broadcast owners seeking financing were changed to include the realities of the broadcast industry under COVID-19, said Circle City CEO DuJuan McCoy. “Nobody is lending money.” The crisis for broadcast financing “dwarfs” past downturns in 2009 and 2010, said Garret Komjathy, US Bank senior vice president-media & communications.

The pandemic led a subsection of the Diversity in Tech working group to focus on educating minority students about the path to getting a job in the tech sector, said Rosa Mendoza Davila, CEO of ALLvanza. “We plan on partnering with STEM organizations and others.” The WG plans a virtual summit on the tech jobs, tentatively Jan. 15.

This iteration of ACDDE's events are a reaction to the pandemic, said ACDDE Chair Anna Gomez, also at Wiley Rein. The overall group plans a tech supplier diversity showcase Oct. 23 and a tech symposium in spring. The showcase was expanded because of the huge hit to small businesses, said Lerman Senter's Jenell Trigg.

“Part of what happens is that the pandemic has forced us indoors, and doing these events is a way to gather together and get a lot done,” Trigg said. This “doesn’t mean it’s going to replace reports and recommendations to the full committee,” Gomez said. Increased events may help the ACDDE “land on pragmatic resolutions to go to the commission,” said Diversity in Tech WG Chair and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Nicol Turner Lee.

The pandemic and recent unrest over racial inequality meant some new opportunities in the communications industry for minorities, some members said. Turner Lee said the shutdown led to expanded use of grocery and food delivery and created opportunities. "We’re gonna see a lot of use new use cases” for technology, she said: “It's very problematic if we don’t get everybody online.” In broadcasting, an increasing number of companies are seeking to advertise with or be associated with minority-owned businesses, an opportunity for minority broadcasters, said Emmis Program Director Skip Dillard

Most of WGs didn’t discuss planned recommendations to the FCC Friday. Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Chair Rudy Brioche said his WG is discussing ways the agency could use “the bully pulpit” to promote broadband adoption and help libraries work better with federal agencies to address connectivity. The FCC has traditionally focused on increasing access to broadband but not on those who live in areas where fixed broadband is available but don’t use it, said Brioche, Comcast vice president-public policy.

Addressing adoption could get results in the short term, Brioche said. Americans who have access to fixed broadband but don’t subscribe is five times higher than those without access, Brioche said. Many libraries are operating under an asymmetry of information about grants and other federal tools available, said Harin Contractor, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies director-workforce policy. “There are a lot of folks out there not talking to each other.”