Many broadcasters are making the trek to the FCC in advance of the agency’s latest proposal to revise the media ownership rules.
The chairman has said he intends to have a proposal circulated to his colleagues by the end of the month.
We’ve reported NAB urged the agency to eliminate the restriction against the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership restrictions. Cox Media, recently urging the commission to eliminate the rule or at remove the radio component. Cox agrees with the commission’s previous conclusions that “the link between the newspaper/radio cross-ownership restriction and the Commission’s goal of promoting viewpoint diversity has become too tenuous to support the rule,” says the company in an ex parte filing.
Connoisseur Media Execs Jeff Warshaw and Michael Dufort met with a legal advisor to the chairman to discuss how the commission conducts multiple ownership analysis of stations in an embedded market, noting that now, the agency looks at how many stations a buyer owns in both the embedded market and the larger market, which may preclude the buyer from owning another station in another embedded market — because stations from both are listed as “home” to the larger market, according to a filing.
Connoisseur says the rationale can no longer be justified because listening and commuting patterns show connections between the embedded markets and the core city as Nielsen defines them, but not between the embedded markets themselves.
The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council met with commission staff to discuss how to promote minority ownership as an integral part of all FCC media rulemaking proceedings in general.
