FCC Eyes Content Sharing Deals Among TV Stations, in Draft Media Ownership NPRM
The FCC asks about deals among multiple TV stations under separate ownership in the same market, in a draft rulemaking notice. The Media Bureau draft NPRM that circulated Nov. 4 (CD Nov 7 p19) asks about shared services agreements and local marketing agreements. Such deals let multiple stations share news and other resources without having the commission consider them commonly owned, which would be barred in many instances. The NPRM asks about the impact of SSAs, LMAs and similar deals on the touchstone of FCC policy goals: Promoting localism, competition and diversity, according to agency officials.
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A group of self-acknowledged unlikely allies joined forces Monday to ask the FCC to examine SSAs, LMAs and joint operating agreements in the quadrennial review of media ownership rules. Large and small multichannel video programming distributors and several nonprofits, including broadcast employee unions, joined the request. Diversity is also asked about in the NPRM, which seeks comment on a batch of studies on ownership the FCC paid for and previously released, commission officials said. The delayed quadrennial review, due to Congress last year, also proposes to keep most limits on the number of TV stations any company can own in a market, and it eyes waivers in the largest markets to a bar on common ownership of radio or TV stations and daily newspapers in the same city (CD Nov 9 p1).
A section of the draft NPRM asks about the attribution of deals between TV stations that are separately owned. The subject wasn’t asked about in last year’s notice of inquiry (CD May 26/10 p6), the new NPRM notes. But it says filings in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bmimqg) have discussed SSAs and similar deals, with industry filers backing them and some nonprofits opposed. The notice asks about what impact such agreements have, according to commission officials. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.
Stations that can’t “lawfully merge under the FCC’s local television rules are nonethelessconsolidating their core operations, staff and news production,” said a letter Monday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bmimqt). It said that “regardless of the label and means of coordination, the outcome is often the same: layoffs of station staff, reduced journalistic independence, and diminished competition for audiences, advertisers” and MVPDs “that carry these stations through retransmission consent agreements.” The letter was signed by the American Cable Association, Dish Network, Free Press, Time Warner Cable and the Communications Workers of America’s National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians and Newspaper Guild.
NAB said such joint TV station deals benefit viewers. “Evidence shows that when a strong local TV station shares resources with another broadcaster, the result is the creation of more local news, weather and sports,” a spokesman said in a written statement (http://xrl.us/bmimru). “The simple reality is that newsgathering and public affairs programming costs money, and that viewers benefit by more choice from a TV station that is free to the public. If the goal of Free Press is to eliminate competition that local broadcasters provide to pay TV conglomerates like Time Warner Cable and DISH, perhaps it should change its name to Pay Press.”
"Our organizations frequently disagree on a host of media and telecommunications policy issues -- however, there is one issue in which we are in agreement” and that is broadcasters increasingly use local deals to “avoid” FCC ownership rules, the filing said. Many of the signers had sought changes to retrans rules. “Separately owned stations in the same market are also coordinating critical operational activities, such as the negotiation of local advertising sales and retransmission consent, reducing the level of competition among them, and permitting these stations to charge higher fees,” Monday’s letter said: It’s a “prevalent practice” to have retrans negotiated by two or more stations, “with at least 36 pairs of separately-owned Big 4 affiliated stations in 33 different markets actually engaging in coordinated negotiations through use of a single bargaining representative.” The filing mentioned that the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the last quadrennial review having kept local TV ownership limits.
The quadrennial review doesn’t raise many new diversity issues, in seeking to answer the Philadelphia court’s remand of eligible entity rules (CD July 8 p3), a commission official said. Instead, the draft NPRM asks about proposals on diversity that have been previously before the commission, the official said. There are questions in the rulemaking about the eligible entity standard, the official said: The document also asks about whether various diversity proposals would stand up to the Supreme Court’s Adarand ruling applying strict constitutional scrutiny to rules aimed at particular groups. The NPRM should propose to adopt a “long-pending” proposal for broadcasters to serve as incubators for minority ownership, said a filing by the Minority Media and Telecom Council (http://xrl.us/bmimsz).