Diversity Committee Members Slam Incubator Program
A provision in the FCC’s incubator program order that allows broadcasters to receive ownership waivers in markets comparable to the one in which they incubate a new broadcast owner “threatens to destroy” the entire program, said members of the Advisory…
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Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment, in a call with Matthew Berry, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s chief of staff. “The notion that a market with fewer than 350,000 people and 63 stations is in any sense ‘comparable’ to a market of over 19,000,000 people with 153 stations is new to communications law,” said Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Senior Adviser David Honig and National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President James Winston in the filing. Honig and Winston said they called Berry on behalf of fellow committee members DuJuan McCoy, CEO of Bayou City Broadcasting, and former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, now with Wiley Rein. No notice was provided during the proceeding of the FCC’s definition of a comparable market, and the definition “was not a logical outgrowth of any earlier proceeding,” the filing said. “The incubation proposal would suddenly have been converted into little more than an engine of large market consolidation."