FCC Votes Seen Improving Pay-TV, Broadcast Data
FCC votes Wednesday were portrayed by members as ways to improve the data available about the pay-TV and broadcast industries. A notice of inquiry for two years of pay-TV subscriber and other information (CD March 27 p6) and an order enlarging the types of broadcast stations that must file an ownership form (CD March 25 p5) were approved at the meeting. The video inquiry will yield information through June 30, 2009, on cable, satellite and telco TV, commissioners and others said. Changes to the ownership form will result in more accurate figures on how many women and minorities own stations, they said. Both items help provide the FCC with up-to-date data in areas where it’s lagged, acting Chairman Michael Copps and other members said.
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The video NOI covers the 52 weeks through June 30 of this and last year and asks the same questions as in the 2007 inquiry, which was released the last week of Kevin Martin’s chairmanship, Media Bureau officials said. It adds a new section on how the economy affects the ability of broadcasters and pay-TV companies to invest in new programing, said Dana Scherer of the bureau. It asks about the “response of incumbent cable operators to this competition” from the likes of Verizon’s FiOS TV and AT&T’s U-verse video, she said. The inquiry asks how full-power broadcasters’ switch to DTV affects their ability to compete with pay-TV, Scherer said.
The goal of the inquiry is for the commission to combine three years worth of data, from 2007 through 2009, in a report this year to Congress, Copps said. Such reports are required annually, and the last one was issued in January and covered 2006, so it’s “already pretty stale,” he said. “We can’t have good fact-based decision making unless we have good, solid data. This item will help us get back on the right track,” Copps said. “We need to play catch up, and that’s what this item will do.”
The NOI is part of the FCC “now being much more responsive to Congress in terms of our statutory obligations,” said Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. “The commission is reintroducing some much-needed integrity into our regulatory process” on video providers. Commissioner Robert McDowell jokingly asked “what’s three years among friends,” saying “we do accelerate our effort to make amends.” The NCTA declined to comment on the NOI, said a spokeswoman.
The broadcast ownership order requires all full-power stations, including sole proprietorships, to file every other year a form 323, bureau officials told commissioners. It mandates that all low-power stations complete the document and allows FCC staffers to perform random audits and make changes to allow a searchable and cross-referenced database, said bureau lawyer Amy Brett. “It will allow the commission and researchers to more reliably assess the state of minority and female ownership as of a certain date.”
A related rulemaking notice asks whether form 323e, filed by noncommercial broadcasters, should be changed to include gender and racial information and tentatively finds doing so would help advance the cause of diversity, a bureau official said. It asks whether low-power FM stations should file the form, the official said.
Low-power TV stations still have “concerns about the paperwork burden that will result from requiring so many stations that were previously exempt to file ownership reports” to do so, said Peter Tannenwald, counsel to the Community Broadcasters Association. It “will require tens of thousands of man-hours.” The group also sees the order as “recognition” that most low-power stations are at least partly owned by women or minorities, Tannenwald added. An NAB spokesman said it “supports the FCC’s effort to collect the most accurate data possible on minority and female ownership of broadcast stations.” The group has “long embraced efforts” to boost such ownership, he added.
McDowell is keen to get feedback on the proposed changes to make sure the FCC doesn’t “impose any inadvertent negative effects,” he said. Because “we need better data,” the order is “overdue” and shows “change has come to the FCC,” said Adelstein. The vote “should be music to the ears of anyone who cares about reversing the shameful state of affairs in which we find ourselves” on broadcast diversity, Copps said. “They are not really reflecting America, and that shortfall will continue until more women and minorities own stations.”