FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and his fellow Republican board members seem to be in a pretty big hurry to eliminate the media cross ownership ban, which prohibits companies from owning newspapers and broadcast properties in the same media market. What's the rush, Kev?
Massive public outcry led to reversal of the FCC's loosening of media ownership rules in 2003. It's time to step up again. Be a part of the solution:
According to wikipedia; "Media cross-ownership is the ownership of multiple media businesses by a person or corporation. These businesses can include broadcast and cable television, radio, newspaper, book publishing, video games, and various online entities. Much of the debate over concentration of media ownership in the United States has for many years focused specifically on the ownership of broadcast stations, cable stations, newspapers and websites. Meaning, that when one organization owned any two of these media outlets, that organization was involved in "cross-ownership."
Owners of American media
The "Big Six"
Although Viacom and CBS Corporation have been separate companies since 2006, they are both partially owned subsidiaries of the private National Amusements company, headed by Sumner Redstone. As such, Paramount Home Entertainment handles DVD/Blu-ray distribution for most of the CBS Corporation library.
Others of note
- Discovery Communications
- Owns Discovery Channel, American Heroes Channel, Animal Planet, Destination America, The Hub,Science, Investigation Discovery, Velocity, 3net, and distribution rights to BBC America and BBC World News.
- E. W. Scripps Company
- Owns Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, and Great American Country.
- DirecTV
- Owns Audience Network, Root Sports, and GSN. DirecTV has some ownership ties to News Corporation, but antitrust restrictions limit News Corporation's influence on DirecTV.
- Companies tied to Cablevision and the Dolan family
- Own AMC, IFC, MSG, Fuse, the Cleveland Indians, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers.
- Oaktree Capital Management
- Owns the former assets of Westwood One (which includes Transtar Radio Networks, NBC Radio, and the Mutual Broadcasting System), Jones Radio Networks, Waitt Radio Networks, Townsquare Media (which owns Regent Communications, Gap Broadcasting, Millennium Broadcasting, andDouble O Radio) and Dial Global, and joint owner of the Tribune Company (with Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase).
- Clear Channel Communications
- Owns Premiere Networks (which in turn owns The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Sean Hannity Show,The Glenn Beck Program, Coast to Coast AM, American Top 40, Delilah, Fox Sports Radio, and The Jim Rome Show, all being among the top national radio programs in their category), a portion ofSirius XM Radio, and previously held a stake in Live Nation as well as several television stations (later under the management of Newport Television, and now owned by separate companies). Parent company Bain Capital also owns a share in The Weather Channel.
- Sinclair Broadcast Group
- Similarly to Clear Channel, it owns or operates a large number of television stations across the country.
History of FCC regulations
Founding
Prior to 1927, public airwaves in the United States were regulated by the United States Department of Commerce and largely litigated in the courts as the growing number of stations fought for space in the burgeoning industry. The Federal Radio Act of 1927 (signed into law February 23, 1927) nationalized the airwaves and formed the Federal Radio Commission, later named the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to assume control of the airwaves.
Communications Act of 1934
The Communications Act of 1934 was the stepping stone for all of the communications rules that are in place today. When first enacted, it created the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).[2] It was created to regulate the telephone monopolies, but also regulate the licensing for the spectrum used for broadcasting. The FCC was given authority by Congress to give out licenses to companies to use the broadcasting spectrum. However, they had to determine whether the license would serve “the public interest, convenience, and necessity”.[3] The primary goal for the FCC, from the start, has been to serve the "public interest". A debated concept, the term “public interest” was provided with a general definition by the Federal Radio Commission. The Commission determined, in its 1928 annual report, that “the emphasis must be first and foremost on the interest, the convenience, and the necessity of the listening public, and not on the interest, convenience, or necessity of the individual broadcaster or the advertiser.”[4] Following this reasoning, early FCC regulations reflected the presumption that "it would not be in the public’s interest for a single entity to hold more than one broadcast license in the same community. The view was that the public would benefit from a diverse array of owners because it would lead to a diverse array of program and ser- vice viewpoints."[5]
The Communications Act of 1934 refined and expanded on the authority of the FCC to regulate public airwaves in the United States, combining and reorganizing provisions from the Federal Radio Act of 1927 and the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910. It empowered the FCC, among other things, to administer broadcasting licenses, impose penalties and regulate standards and equipment used on the airwaves. The Act also mandated that the FCC would act in the interest of the "public convenience, interest, or necessity."[6] The Act established a system whereby the FCC grants licenses to the spectrum to broadcasters for commercial use, so long as the broadcasters act in the public interest by providing news programming.
Lobbyists from the largest radio broadcasters, ABC and NBC, wanted to establish high fees for broadcasting licenses, but Congress saw this as a limitation upon free speech. Consequently, “the franchise to operate a broadcasting station, often worth millions, is awarded free of charge to enterprises selected under the standard of ‘public interest, convenience, or necessity.’”[7]
Nevertheless, radio and television was dominated by the Big Three television networks until the mid-1990s.
Cross ownership rules of 1975
In 1975, the FCC passed the newspaper and broadcast cross-ownership rule.[8] This ban prohibited the ownership of a daily newspaper and any "full-power broadcast station that serviced the same community".[5] This rule emphasized the need to ensure that a broad number of voices were given the opportunity to communicate via different outlets in each market.
The FCC designed rules to make sure that there is a diversity of voices and opinions on the airwaves. “Beginning in 1975, FCC rules banned cross-ownership by a single entity of a daily newspaper and television or radio broadcast station operating in the same local market.” [9] The ruling was put in place to limit media concentration in TV and radio markets, because they use public airwaves, which is a valuable, and now, limited resource.
Telecommunications Act 1996
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was an influential act for media cross-ownership. One of the requirements of the act was that the FCC must conduct a biennial review of its media ownership rules “and shall determine whether any of such rules are necessary in the public interest as the result of competition.” The Commission was ordered to “repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer in the public interest.” [10]
The legislation, touted as a step that would foster competition, actually resulted in the subsequent mergers of several large companies, a trend which still continues.[11] Over 4,000 radio stations were bought out, and minority ownership of TV stations dropped to its lowest point since the federal government began tracking such data in 1990.[12]
Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, restrictions on media merging have decreased. Although merging media companies seems to provide many positive outcomes for the companies involved in the merge, it might lead to some negative outcomes for other companies, viewers and future businesses. The FCC even found that they were indeed negative effects of recent merges in a study that they issued.[13]
Since 2000
In September 2002, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking stating that the Commission would re-evaluate its media ownership rules pursuant to the obligation specified in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.[5][14] In June 2003, after its deliberations which included a single public hearing and the review of nearly two-million pieces of correspondence from the public opposing further relaxation of the ownership rules[15] the FCC voted 3-2 to repeal the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban and to make changes to or repeal a number of its other ownership rules as well.[5][16] In the order, the FCC noted that the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule was no longer necessary in the public interest to maintain competition, diversity or localism. However, in 2007 the FCC revised its rules and ruled that they would take it “case-by-case and determine if the cross-ownership would affect the public interest.[5] The rule changes permitted a company to own a newspaper and broadcast station in any of the nation’s top 20 media markets as long as there are at least eight media outlets in the market. If the combination included a television station, that station couldn’t be in the market’s top four. As it has since 2003, Prometheus Radio Project argued that the relaxed rule would pave the way for more media consolidation. Broadcasters, pointing to the increasing competition from new platforms, argued that the FCC’s rules—including other ownership regulations that govern TV duopolies and radio ownership—should be relaxed even further. The FCC, meanwhile, defended its right to change the rules either way.“[9] That public interest is what the FCC bases its judgments on, whether a media cross-ownership would be a positive and contributive force, locally and nationally.
The FCC held one official forum, February 27, 2003, in Richmond, Virginia in response to public pressures to allow for more input on the issue of elimination of media ownership limits. Some complain that more than one forum was needed.[17]
In 2003 the FCC set out to re-evaluate its media ownership rules specified in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. On June 2, 2003, FCC, in a 3-2 vote under Chairman Michael Powell, approved new media ownership laws that removed many of the restrictions previously imposed to limit ownership of media within a local area. The changes were not, as is customarily done, made available to the public for a comment period.
- Single-company ownership of media in a given market is now permitted up to 45% (formerly 35%, up from 25% in 1985) of that market.
- Restrictions on newspaper and TV station ownership in the same market were removed.
- All TV channels, magazines, newspapers, cable, and Internet services are now counted, weighted based on people's average tendency to find news on that medium. At the same time, whether a channel actually contains news is no longer considered in counting the percentage of a medium owned by one owner.
- Previous requirements for periodic review of license have been changed. Licenses are no longer reviewed for "public-interest" considerations.
The decision by the FCC was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit inPrometheus Radio Project v. FCC in June, 2004. The Majority ruled 2-1 against the FCC and ordered the Commission to reconfigure how it justified raising ownership limits. The Supreme Court later turned down an appeal, so the ruling stands.[18]
In June 2006, the FCC adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPR)[19] to address the issues raised by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and also to perform the recurring evaluation of the media ownership rules required by the Telecommunications Act.[20] The deliberations would draw upon three formal sources of input:(1) the submission of comments, (2) ten Commissioned studies, and (3) six public hearings.[5]
The FCC in 2007 voted to modestly relax its existing ban on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership.[21]The FCC voted December 18, 2007 to eliminate some media ownership rules, including a statute that forbids a single company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin circulated the plan in October 2007.[18] Martin's justification for the rule change is to ensure the viability of America's newspapers and to address issues raised in the 2003 FCC decision that was later struck down by the courts.[22] The FCC held six hearings around the country to receive public input from individuals, broadcasters and corporations. Because of the lack of discussion during the 2003 proceedings, increased attention has been paid to ensuring that the FCC engages in proper dialogue with the public regarding its current rules change.
FCC Commissioners Deborah Taylor-Tate and Robert McDowell joined Chairman Martin in voting in favor of the rule change. Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, both Democrats, opposed the change.[23]
In 2013 the FCC proposed that a pre-digital rule that counted each UHF station as worth half a VHF station for the ownership rules be removed.[24]
Local content
A recent study found that news stations operated by a small media company produced more local news and more locally produced video than large chain-based broadcasting groups.[5][25] It was then argued that the FCC claimed, in 2003, that larger media groups produced better quality local content. Research by Philip Napoli and Michael Yan showed that larger media groups actually produced less local content.[5][26] In a different study, they also showed that "ownership by one of the big four broadcast networks has been linked to a considerable decrease in the amount of televised local public affairs programming" [5]
The major reasoning the FCC made for deregulation was that with more capital broadcasting organizations could produce more and better local content. However, the research studies by Napoli and Yan showed that once teamed-up, they produced less content. Cross ownership between broadcasting and newspapers is a complicated issue. The FCC believes that more deregulation is necessary. However, with research studies showing that they produced less local content - less voices being heard that are from within the communities. While less local voices are heard, more national-based voices do appear. Chain-based companies are using convergence, the same content being produced across multiple mediums, to produce this mass-produced content. It's cheaper and more efficient than having to run different local and national news. However, with convergence and chain-based ownership you can choose which stories to run and how the stories are heard - being able to be played in local communities and national stage.
Robert W. McChesney
Robert McChesney is an advocate for media reform, and the co-founder of Free Press, which was established in 2003.[27]His work is based on theoretical, normative, and empirical evidence suggesting that media regulation efforts should be more strongly oriented towards maintaining a healthy balance of diverse viewpoints in the media environment. However, his viewpoints on current regulation are; "there is every bit as much regulation by government as before, only now it is more explicitly directed to serve large corporate interests."[28]
McChesney believes that the Free Press' objective is a more diverse and competitive commercial system with a significant nonprofit and noncommercial sector. It would be a system built for the citizens, but most importantly - it would be accessible to anyone who wants to broadcast. Not only specifically the big corporations that can afford to broadcast nationally, but more importantly locally. McChesney suggests that to better our current system we need to "establish a bona fide noncommercial public radio and television system, with local and national stations and networks. The expense should come out of the general budget" [29]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_United_StatesEnd
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2014/03/us-media-cross-ownership-fcc-regulation.html
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