Commissioners to Decide on Plans to Foster Minority Media Ownership
Commissioners will vote Tuesday on whether to adopt media ownership proposals (CD July 31 p1) by the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council and others to help people of color buy TV and radio stations, two FCC officials said. They said an order that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin circulated Nov. 15 would approve many of the minority ownership plans and deny or seek additional comment on others. The order and a related further-rulemaking notice deal with 34 minority ownership proposals the commission sought public comment on Aug. 2 in its media ownership review, FCC officials said.
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The vote would come before Dec. 18, when Martin wants the commissioners to act on his plan to cut back particularly in the 20 largest markets a ban on common ownership of a newspaper and TV or radio station in a city. Opponents of consolidation say that would hurt minority broadcasters, and Minority Media & Telecommunications Council Executive Director David Honig said some members oppose relaxing cross- ownership rules. “It’s a very good thing” that cross- ownership and minority ownership aren’t being linked “because they are two very different issues,” he said. But he fears that the FCC may adopt a Small Business Administration definition for the companies that the new rules will benefit. Honig wants the rules aimed at socially and economically disadvantaged businesses.
The order and further rulemaking notice weren’t “white copied” by Martin to the other commissioners three weeks before the Nov. 27 FCC meeting, as is customary, sources said. They said the chairman probably put the item on the agenda less than two weeks before the meeting because it deals in part with a leased broadcast-spectrum rulemaking notice on the FCC’s top floor since March. That item seeks public comment on whether independent programmers, which could include minorities and women, should be guaranteed carriage on cable systems when they lease digital spectrum from TV stations, agency sources said. Cable and broadcast executives and minority and public-interest groups have been cool to the idea of leasing spectrum.
Martin folded that proposal into the larger minority ownership order and notice now set for a vote, commission sources said. The order would approve about a dozen ownership proposals by the council, a source said. It wasn’t clear which plans Martin’s draft order would approve. An FCC spokeswoman declined to comment. Matters taken up in the order that the FCC sought public feedback on include how to define disadvantaged businesses, whether to waive certain ownership limits when broadcasters intend to sell assets to small businesses and how the FCC can promote minority ownership. In July 2006, minorities owned 3.3 percent of U.S. full-power TV stations, said Fress Press Research Director Derek Turner. Minorities owned 7.7 percent of full- power radio broadcasters in February.
Broadcasters support some of the council’s proposals, they have told the FCC. In a filing Tuesday, the council highlighted endorsement of recommendations by the Diversity and Competition Supporters, which includes the group. “For the first time in 30 years, the broadcasting industry has spoken with one voice to endorse a wide range of minority ownership initiatives,” the council said. “Few objections have been raised to any of DCS’s proposals, and those objections are relatively easy to address through modifications to some of the proposals.” Honig hopes for a unanimous vote Tuesday, he said, but he wouldn’t handicap the outcome. Except for a dissent by Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth in 2000 on equal employment opportunity rules, Honig said, “every single previous commission vote on minority ownership has been unanimous.”