Future of Media Implementation, Delayed at FCC, May Come Up Monday
Top FCC officials may decide to discuss ways the agency will implement some of the many recommendations in the report on the future of the media industry at an event Monday in Phoenix, agency officials watching the deliberations said. They said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Steve Waldman, who wrote the 478-page report finished in June, may talk about concrete steps the agency will take to act on its suggestions on the broadcasting industry. Genachowski’s office and Waldman appeared to be working out the details on Friday of the extent of the recommendations that will be implemented, with a view to possibly discussing some at the hearing, agency officials said. Waldman leaves the agency at week’s end.
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Some at the commission have been hoping the agency will pick up the pace of putting the recommendations in the report into action by starting the rulemaking process to seek comment on them, agency officials said. They noted that Commissioner Michael Copps has been among them, and he has long said the agency ought to do more to hold radio and TV stations accountable. Other officials also want to see action, they said. Copps, an FCC spokesman and Waldman declined to comment.
The only recommendation in the report the commission has acted on was to delete the Fairness Doctrine from the books (CD Aug 23 p1), agency officials said. Officials noted that’s something Genachowski had promised Republican lawmakers before the document was released that he'd do (CD June 9 p14). There are no moves afoot now for Genachowski to seek a vote by commissioners on any items from the report, although there’s hope that could soon change, agency and nonprofit officials said. They noted the commission has been busy implementing rules in other areas besides broadcasting, and that media generally hasn’t been a high priority at the agency.
Monday’s event at Arizona State University seems designed to show what the commission is doing generally on media issues, rather than to introduce many specific remedies, said Professor Craig Allen. He and others at ASU noted that the FCC appears to have picked the school for the hearing, the first for the report, because of ties between the agency and Len Downie, a journalism professor at the university’s Cronkite School. The former editor of The Washington Post is among those who will testify at the hearing. “My focus will be on local news coverage, non-profit news startups, university-produced local news, etc.,” Downie said. He said he wasn’t involved in arranging for the hearing.
"It’s a showcase kind of meeting -- show the public who were are, break bread, get out in the public spotlight kind of thing,” Allen said. On issues other than seeking legislation to voluntarily repurpose TV stations’ spectrum, “there has been a grace given” to broadcasters after the 2009 DTV transition by the FCC, he said. “Now’s the time not to be pulling on the ends of the ropes so much,” because of the industry’s fragile business state because of the economy and new media, Allen said. “There’s just a lot of fear and uncertainty of where things are going to lead” among the Phoenix broadcasters he speaks to, the media-studies professor said: “So I think the commission is of a mind to do more pie-in-the-sky things now” on media, rather than “undertaking major initiatives."
"NAB hopes the commission will adopt media ownership reforms recommended in the report,” an association spokesman said. “In an era of relentless competition from pay distribution platforms, it is irrational to continue shackling free and local broadcasters with rules that were adopted before the first Moon landing.” The report asked that the localism proceeding be junked, and that broadcasters put more information online instead of filing them in paper reports available only at stations and not on the Internet (CD June 10 p1). The name was changed from the Future of Media report to the “The Information Needs of Communities” shortly before Waldman presented it at June’s monthly FCC meeting.
"A lot of people have felt that the FCC’s attention has not been focused on media issues,” said Policy Counsel Corie Wright of Free Press, which has sought agency implementation of the online disclosure idea. “I think in the next year that’s going to have to change, if only because they have a mandated media ownership review which you can’t keep kicking down the road” on, she added. “They do have some recommendations that could be helpful, and they really shouldn’t dawdle about trying to put those in motion.” After all the staff that worked on the report, with the hiring of Waldman to write it, “you might as well go ahead and implement some of the recommendations contained in it,” Wright said. “There hasn’t been any yet, but it’s not too late.”