McDowell Against JSA Limits, Unsatisfied With FCC Diversity Efforts
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell urged the commission to resist calls for limiting the use of joint sales, shared service and local news service agreements. These agreements provide efficiencies that lower operation and production costs for broadcasters, “enabling them to deploy more resources that benefit more consumers,” he said Wednesday at a Minority Media & Telecom Council event. A draft order ending the media ownership review that was due to have been completed in 2010 would attribute TV joint services agreements when to the station brokering more than 15 percent of ads for its JSA partner (CD Dec 27 p1). Companies with stations in JSAs continue lobbying the commission to not deem them attributable under ownership rules. (See separate report below in this issue.)
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McDowell said the JSAs are bringing new sources of news and information to smaller towns across the U.S. They “add hours of local news to smaller markets that would not have it otherwise,” he said. He urged the FCC not to regulate without a full understanding of how the agreements are used “and how they enhance viewpoint diversity and augment local news and information programming in the places that need it most.”
McDowell said he isn’t satisfied with the commission’s diversity efforts of late. The FCC “must initiate and conclude the diversity studies, which are … required by law,” he said.
"Any action the FCC would undertake regarding race- and/or gender-based regulations to expand opportunities for minorities and women must satisfy the rigorous demands of the Constitution’s equal protection clause, including the strict scrutiny standard under the Supreme Court’s Adarand line of cases,” McDowell said. Although the commission has taken constructive steps to improve its minority ownership data, “it must conclude these crucial studies to determine the best approaches to increased media diversity and whether race and/or gender-based rules are legally sustainable under the Constitution,” he said. McDowell said he hopes the FCC will pursue legally sustainable gender and race neutral means “to increase diversity, including minority and female ownership.”
National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters Executive Director James Winston said he disagreed with McDowell’s analysis. “Any incremental change that further allows more consolidation is going to be bad news for minority ownership,” Winston said on a panel with McDowell at MMTC’s conference. Winston agreed that the FCC should complete its diversity studies, he said. The commission hasn’t completed its studies on race-conscious policies under the Atarand standard, he said. “Whether those studies will be completed is up in the air.”
Broadcasters had “a full transformation of the kinds of things we can do with our existing media,” said Jane Mago, NAB executive vice president. “When we changed to digital TV, we increase the number of things you can with the digital TV signal.” There are different broadcast products that can be used for mobile-type services, she said. The challenge is in figuring out how to harness that “in a way that makes the maximum use of the broadcast signal,” she said. Minority ownership can be increased by increasing the number of women and minorities in leadership positions at media companies, she added.