Martin Unveils Sponsorship-ID Notice, Touts Minority Plans
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants a vote on a sponsorship identification rulemaking recently circulated among the commissioners, he told a Chicago media ownership hearing. He and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein also touted plans they say will bolster minority ownership. Commissioner Michael Copps lamented the broadcast license renewal process. In many of their opening remarks late Thursday, the regulators addressed their personal priorities, endorsing some plans as ways to help minorities buy radio and TV stations or get cable to carry shows they produce.
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The sponsorship rulemaking Martin said he recently sent around the eighth floor previously hadn’t been made public, unlike many other proposals mentioned at the hearing. Martin said it asks whether to revise sponsorship identification rules. He gave few details on the notice, saying it arose from complaints at an FCC ownership meeting in Los Angeles about product placements on TV shows. “As these techniques become increasingly prevalent, there is growing concern that our sponsorship identification rules fall short of their ultimate goal,” Martin said. The goal is “to be able to identify both the commercial nature of programming as well as its source,” he said. The notice asks if the FCC should alter its rules “to ensure adequate disclosure to the public” when products are promoted on-air, he said. The related issue of payola has been an Adelstein priority.
Martin linked a controversial rulemaking he circulated last winter that would guarantee small businesses cable carriage to his goal of improved minority access to the airwaves. “The commission can and should help small and independently owned businesses overcome these obstacles” by letting them lease broadcast spectrum, he said. Martin said his plan would let such programmers get must-carry rights on cable systems if they adhere to public-interest rules. “I encourage all the commissioners to take a look at that,” he added. Both broadcasters and cable operators are leery of the plan, in which small programmers could lease digital multicast spectrum from TV stations (CD Feb 15 p7).
Martin will keep pressing Congress to revive tax credits for broadcasters selling assets to minorities, he said. And the commission should “examine” rules that would let small programmers lease time by the hour on cable systems, an idea addressed in an existing rulemaking notice. Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Chairman Martin King told the hearing that his group wants Congress to restore the minority-tax certificate. “Too few own too much at the expense of too many,” he said. “The government has turned a blind eye for decades to this issue.”
Adelstein seconded King, slamming the FCC for ignoring recommendations by its own diversity committee, some dating to 1992. Some of those proposals are part of a rulemaking notice issued Aug. 1. Adelstein wants an “independent” panel formed immediately to review all minority-ownership plans, which he said the FCC should address before it votes on a broader order dealing with media ownership limits. The Chicago meeting was the fifth of sixth public hearings on ownership. A 2003 order lifting ownership limits, remanded to the agency a year later by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, was a mistake, Adelstein said. “We promoted the concept of consolidation over diversity,” he said. “The FCC’s legacy does not make us proud.”
Commissioner Michael Copps said the FCC should reform its broadcast license renewal process, which he has criticized before. “The FCC used to hold broadcasters to their end of the bargain” by requiring renewals every three years, he said. Now renewals occur every eight years. “Let’s not just blame the broadcaster,” added Copps. “Let’s blame the FCC for being asleep at the switch for much of the last 25 years.”