Public Interest Groups: FCC Should Collect Diversity Data on Streamers

The FCC should require licensees to collect and report diversity data from the companies that provide their media content, including on streaming services, said a petition Thursday from programmer Fuse Media and several public interest groups including the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Public Knowledge and Common Cause.

The petition doesn’t limit the proposal to companies overseen by the FCC's Media Bureau, but loops in broadband licensees such as Google and Amazon. “Collecting data from all of the regulatee’s services will not only provide a fuller picture of the regulatee’s overall commitment to diversity but would allow the Commission to compare viewpoint diversity and competition across different services,” said the petition.

Broadcasters often argue against FCC regulation efforts by noting their tech company competitors don’t face the same requirements, said Common Cause Director-Media and Democracy Yosef Getachew. “They should welcome a proceeding that includes the entire market.” NAB declined to comment. “This is part of understanding the communications marketplace,” said Cheryl Leanza, of petitioner United Church of Christ media justice ministry. The FCC “is charged with promoting competition and diversity in the video marketplace,” the report said, but “currently fails regularly to collect and report on data regarding the demographic diversity of vendors providing one of the most critical inputs to the video marketplace: content.”

The petition seeks an annual report on the diversity of the content vendors used by FCC regulatees for any video service they provide. The report would measure programmers' diversity of ownership, leadership, and employment, the petition said. “This should include all content vendors, whether they provide content for the regulatee’s traditional, FCC-regulated services, or online streaming platforms owned or affiliated with the regulatees,” the petition said.

That means the report should include data on Alphabet-owned YouTube, though only Google Fiber falls under FCC jurisdiction, the petition said. Streaming services that aren’t affiliated with an FCC-regulated entity wouldn’t be included, the petition said. “Collecting data on just some services from a company, but not others, reflects neither viewer behavior nor business realities.” NCTA, Alphabet, ACA Connects, Dish Network, DirecTV, Netflix, Hulu and Paramount+ didn’t comment.

It isn’t clear what the FCC could do with diversity information about services that don’t fall within its regulations, said broadcast attorney Jack Goodman, a former NAB general counsel. If the FCC can’t act on the data, “why collect it?” he asked. The data collection would be “of a piece” with agency efforts to collect ownership and equal employment opportunity data, said Leanza. “If you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know about disparate impacts,” she said. “Public reporting of demographic data is used in many areas as a means to improve change without resorting to other more burdensome regulatory or legal requirements,” the petition said.

The FCC “has ample jurisdiction to gather data relevant to its supervision of licensees,” said David Honig, senior adviser to the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council. MMTC isn’t one of the petitioners but has long proposed the agency expand cable procurement diversity reporting requirements to all regulated entities. “The proposal is race-neutral and content-neutral,” Honig said.

The practicalities of such an information gathering also raise questions, said Goodman. Many content vendors get their content from other vendors, and it isn’t clear what an FCC licensee could do to gather information from vendors that choose not to respond. A lawyer with cable clients told us data about the diversity of programmer ownership or leadership isn't something clients typically collect or have access to.

The effort is likely to be a burden for smaller entities such as smaller broadcasters or MVPDs, said University of Minnesota media law professor Christopher Terry, who studies content diversity. He also said the information yielded by such a study “would be very interesting.” Many of the entities already collect and report or publish diversity data, said Leanza of the United Church of Christ. NAB and the FCC recently battled in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit over additional information gathering requirements for broadcasters from the agency’s foreign-sponsored content rules (see 2204120059).

Several industry officials told us the agency would likely need to have a full complement of commissioners for a rulemaking on the proposed report to proceed. That's not needed for taking the initial step of seeking comment on the petition, Leanza said. The FCC didn't comment.