Martin Media Ownership Timeline Not Yet Approved by Other Commissioners

Eighth-floor inaction means the Oct. 31 FCC meeting probably won’t be held at the same time as a public hearing on how well broadcasters serve their communities (CD Oct 11 p2), said three agency sources. They said all commissioners had agreed to hold both the monthly FCC meeting and localism hearing then. But Martin seemed to balk at scheduling the localism hearing because commissioners didn’t approve his media vote proposal. Commissioners haven’t been preparing for the localism hearing, further indicating the meeting has been put off. The commission never announced a time for the hearing, but two weeks ago set Oct. 31 as its monthly meeting.

Commissioners are preparing to vote on several media items at the meeting, said FCC officials. Martin’s office has indicated to commissioners that he'll put on the agenda an order barring exclusive contracts for pay-TV service between apartment buildings and cable and telecommunications companies, said an FCC source. The chairman also indicated he'll seek an Oct. 31 vote on an order capping some fees cable operators pay to cities when their municipal contracts expire, said the official. Other agency officials also expect votes on those orders at the meeting. The 2006 video competition report, circulated several weeks ago, won’t likely be voted on because commissioners haven’t had enough time to review it, said a source. Commissioners hadn’t expected to vote on any items at the meeting when Martin wanted to combine it with the localism hearing. At two other media hearings combined with commission meetings this year, no votes were taken.

No commissioners voted on the media ownership public notice by midday Tuesday, besides Martin, said two FCC officials. Martin’s draft of the notice proposed to hold the final of six media ownership hearings Nov. 2 in Seattle. The FCC would launch a further rulemaking Nov. 13. The rulemaking would provide a public preview of an ownership order that commissioners would agree to give a thumbs’ up or down to by Dec. 18. The rulemaking would also solicit public input on the ownership order. Lack of eighth-floor consensus on whether to approve the notice has also put the Seattle hearing in jeopardy, said FCC officials.

Martin’s plan for a speedy end to the media ownership review faces the most opposition internally from Adelstein and Copps, said FCC officials. They likely are pushing Martin to extend the ownership review, begun in June 2006. Martin has also angered some eighth-floor officials by trying to link a date for the localism hearing to getting a vote on the public notice, said a source. Copps has said he thinks Martin is trying to force the review to a premature conclusion. Both Democrats have said they won’t vote on any ownership rewrite until the FCC starts an independent panel to review minority ownership proposals and a vote is taken on the recommendations. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Tuesday that Martin is trying to “rush through rule changes.” The senators will discuss their concerns today (Wednesday) at a Capitol Hill news briefing.

Martin is expected by industry executives to propose to rescind a ban preventing a broadcaster from owning a newspaper in the same city and to let a company own more radio or TV stations in the same town. Ownership deregulation was supported in Monday FCC filings by NAB, the Newspaper Association of America, Belo, Clear Channel, Media General, Sinclair and Tribune. They commented on 10 media ownership studies the FCC paid about $300,000 for. Groups opposed to media consolidation said the research showed deregulation would hurt minorities and women.

Minority and women’s groups said the FCC studies show that further deregulation would make it even harder for people of color to buy radio and TV stations. Ownership diversity has decreased and fewer companies own more radio stations, said the Benton Foundation, National Organization for Women and United Church of Christ. The groups and two others, in a joint filing, said the FCC studies show an increase in the number of TV station duopolies and in radio and TV stations held by a company owning a paper in the same city. “If anything, the studies support tightening media ownership limits,” said the groups. Their comments and a filing by nine groups said the FCC must do a better job collecting data on female and minority media ownership. Two of the reports “fail to look at how the FCC’s own rules have affected women’s ownership, and neither proposes a solution to this problem,” said the filing by the National Congress of Black Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Council of Women’s Organizations and others.

Another filing called the studies “junk science,” saying the reports were chosen to find support for deregulation. A June 2006 paper from Leslie Marx, then FCC chief economist, showed that research was “cobbled together to prove a foregone conclusion,” said the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and Free Press. By writing that she sought research to support relaxing the cross-ownership ban, Marx was part of a “biased, tainted process,” said the groups. “The Commission did not ask the right questions, and it was so hell-bent on supporting its predetermined result that basic data definitions, the framing of policy and research questions” and the reports’ methodologies “do not stand close scrutiny,” they added. Marx’s paper was obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request from Georgetown University’s Institute of Public Representation, which represents some of the women’s groups opposing deregulation.

NAB said the FCC should “promptly” finish the ownership review by ending the cross-ownership ban and allowing for the formation of more TV duopolies. Cross- ownership helps stations pay for “costly services such as local news” and better compete with cable and other video products, said NAB. “The various studies show that the cross-ownership of broadcast stations with newspapers and the common ownership of broadcast stations in the same market promote the Commission’s traditional goals of competition, diversity and localism.” The Newspaper Association of America agreed that the studies showed there’s ample reason to overturn the cross-ownership rule. The studies are buttressed by the fact that they were written by government employees and academics, none of whom had done previous work to suggest a policy bias, said NAA. “When these unanimous findings are viewed in combination with the wealth of prior evidence submitted in the FCC’s series of newspaper cross-ownership proceedings, there simply can be no doubt that the Commission now has more than ample justification to repeal the outdated, 32- year ban.”