He’s largely known as one of the nation’s top media brokers. But, Eddie Esserman of Media Services Group is also the head of Golden Isles Broadcasting, the licensee of three FM radio stations serving the Brunswick, Ga., region.
And, like other radio station licensees, Golden Isles has something to say to the FCC regarding its 2018 Quadrennial Regulatory Review of Commission broadcast media ownership rules.
That said, Esserman tells RBR+TVBR he believes his Reply Comments in M.B. Docket No 18-349 raise a new question.
Simply stated, Esserman wants to know who’s doing the regulating.
“Our position is it is vendors BIA and Nielsen, rather than the FCC, in some matters,” he says.
Esserman’s Reply Comments, filed by legal counsel Sally Buckman at Lerman Senter, open with a large statement of support of the “numerous commenters” who “once again demonstrate the acute need — now more urgent than ever — for the FCC to modernize the Local Radio Ownership Rule.”
Why? “[B]roadcast radio stations no longer compete only against themselves.”
That said, Golden Isles brings to the Commission’s attention “a change in the radio industry that affects the methodology used to determine the number of radio stations assigned to a specific market for purposes of determining compliance with the Local Radio Ownership Rule.”
The change involves Nielsen’s decision to no longer include non-subscribing stations as “home” to a Nielsen-defined market, and how that change impacts BIA’s determinations as to which stations are included in specific geographic markets for its Media Access Pro database.
This change, Esserman argues, has the potential to generate “market distortions and inequities.” As such, Golden Isles “encourages the Commission to adopt a straightforward geographic-based test for determining whether a station is included in a market for purposes of the Local Radio Ownership Rule.”
Golden Isles’ three FMs largely focus on Brunswick and nearby St. Simons Island, where Esserman resides. With Savannah to the north and Jacksonville to the south, there’s certainly historical media squeeze with TV and big-market radio. Today, however, Facebook, Pandora/Sirius XM, Spotify, YouTube, and Google are noted as competitors that the FCC must take into account, Golden Isles argues.
“Golden Isles strongly encourages the Commission to acknowledge that the old concept of radio broadcasting as a siloed market unto itself is severely outdated, and to recognize that in 2021 – twenty-five years after passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and implementation of the Local Radio Ownership Rule – radio has become but one small cog in a massive, and immensely changed, audio and electronic media ecosystem,” Buckman pleads on behalf of her client.
Yet, it is the manner in which the FCC determines how many radio stations are included in a Nielsen Audio rated market for purposes of determining the size of the market, and a licensee’s compliance with the Local Radio Ownership Rule in that market, which Esserman wants to push at the FCC.
A recent change at Nielsen Audio “upends” the FCC formula, he believes. How so? Under Nielsen’s “Subscriber First” policy, which was announced in 2020 and implemented in early 2021, stations that do not subscribe to Nielsen’s services are no longer included in Nielsen’s summary ratings. Hence, non-subscribing stations effectively become “invisible” and “vanish.” As Golden Isles does not subscribe to Nielsen, Esserman has had discussions with the audience measurement giant in which Nielsen encouraged Golden Isles to subscribe because of the impact of this policy change; Nielsen advised that following the implementation of the policy change, non-subscribing stations would no longer be considered “Home to Metro” stations.
For Golden Isles, this has “obvious repercussions” for the Local Radio Ownership Rule.
“Stations that are licensed to communities included in the boundaries of specific metros can be readily determined, but because Nielsen now treats non-subscribing stations as not ‘home’ to a market and doesn’t make ratings information for such stations available to advertisers, the fundamental basis for the FCC’s determination of which stations are included in a market is no longer reliable,” Golden Isles argues.
Moreover, it continues, “There is no certainty that the information BIA uses to determine which stations should be included in a market for its Media Access Pro database is reliable or objective … In other words, BIA should not be able to decide that a particular non-subscribing station should be considered as ‘home’ to a market when Nielsen has specifically decided that information about the station should not be made available to advertisers and other third parties.”
That’s why, going forward, the FCC is being asked to use “a simple, geographic-based determination as to whether or not a station is part of a market.”
Golden Isles is the licensee of three FM radio stations: WRJY, WSSI, and WXMK; Brunswick is radio market No. 249.
RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION: Eddie Esserman’s request seems simple. So, why rely on Nielsen Audio or BIA Media Advisors? We believe it dates back to Clear Channel Communications, and their Washington, D.C., lobbyists who convinced the Commission to work on their behalf as it maneuvered to become the nation’s No. 1 licensee of radio stations. Yeah, a station may have a signal contour that primarily serves one community. But, what if the “market” is an adjacent metropolitan area? That could be key in adhering to the FCC’s subcap rules on local market concentration. Of course, most broadcasters — including Golden Isles — want the subcaps removed in markets such as Brunswick. So, the point would be moot. While we disagree with many broadcasters that more properties will lead to greater firepower against digital while we chuckle at the preposterous idea that more format diversity will result from further consolidation, Esserman has a good point. Relying on private business to determine federal policy isn’t a good idea. The Commission should review his Reply Comments thoroughly and greatly rethink the formula it put in place.
