Pressure Rising at FCC to Help Minority Media Owners
Momentum for rules to help minorities buy or run media assets is growing at the FCC, with recent public discussion of low ownership rates and solutions to the problem. At a Sept. 20 media ownership hearing, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said they want more minority participation in the industry. On Thursday, Commissioner Michael Copps bemoaned the fact that far less than 10 percent of broadcast assets are owned by minorities, urging the FCC to do more. The same day the FCC diversity committee recommended several steps the full commission could take to help women, minorities and small businesses.
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The FCC should act on “numerous minority ownership proposals” from the agency’s diversity committee and the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, Copps said. “Something is seriously out of whack” regarding low broadcast ownership rates, Copps told reporters, noting that in a 2004 decision remanding the agency’s last media ownership rule rewrite, the 3rd U.S. Appeals Court in Philadelphia chastised the commission for inactivity. “We must heed the court’s direction and take affirmative steps so that minorities, women and small businesses have a fighting chance” to buy radio and TV stations,” said Copps. Last week, Adelstein sought action on the committee’s proposals, asking the commission to set up an independent panel to review them. Support for Adelstein’s proposal is building on Capitol Hill, with key members of Congress expected to tell Martin they back it, said an FCC official.
The diversity committee voted to recommend that the FCC approve a notice of proposed rulemaking to let small companies and those run by women and minorities get separate FCC licenses when leasing FM radio or digital TV capacity. A lease could boost minority presence in the industry by letting minorities get licenses to use stations part-time without having to buy, said Henry Rivera, a former FCC commissioner. Rivera chairs the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age.
A leasing system would ease the pressure to get loans to buy broadcast assets, Rivera said in an interview. “It just makes it easier for these small businesses to get into the business because they don’t need the massive amount of capital if they're just leasing and not buying,” he said. FCC rules don’t let third parties have broadcast licenses for leased access, he said. The committee recommended the FCC publish a book on diversity in the media and telecom industries. It sent back for more consideration a subcommittee recommendation that the FCC hold a conference in the first quarter in New York between minorities and investors, said Rivera. The committee meets next in December.