March 28, 2024

F.C.C. Is Again Examining Looser Cross-Ownership Rules

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission appears to be close to adopting rules that would relax a longstanding ban on ownership of both a newspaper and a television or radio station in large metropolitan media markets.

Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, has circulated to the agency’s four other commissioners a proposal “to streamline and modernize media ownership rules, including eliminating outdated prohibitions on newspaper-radio and TV-radio cross-ownership,” said a spokesman for the commission, Justin Cole, in a statement.

The order is likely to be taken up at the F.C.C.’s December meeting.

This would be the third time in a decade that the F.C.C. has tried to loosen the rules, which have long prohibited the ownership of multiple media outlets in one area. Supporters of the rules say they are necessary to provide for a diversity of voices in a community.

The F.C.C.’s last effort, which began in 2007, was overturned by a federal appeals court last year. The court ruled that the commission had not provided adequate notice and opportunity for public comment before instituting the rules. In June, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

But the media landscape has changed significantly in recent years. With increasing numbers of people obtaining their news online, newspapers have suffered financially, and many have shut down. Supporters of a relaxed ownership rule believe that broadcasters might offer financial support to newspapers in some markets if the two could share resources.

The F.C.C. outlined new proposals in December. Media companies have been furiously lobbying the agency since then. It is not known how Mr. Genachowski’s current proposal differs, if at all, from the December outline. And the new proposal could change based on comments from other commissioners.

The December proposals would provide for exemptions from the ban on combinations between stations and newspapers in the top 20 media markets. Combinations in smaller media markets would still be limited, as would mergers between any of the four largest broadcasters in a given market and a newspaper or radio station. Mergers would be allowed only if there remained at least eight “major media voices” in that market.

“While the media marketplace is in transition,” Mr. Cole said in the statement, “broadband and new media are not yet available as ubiquitously as traditional broadcast media, and certain protections therefore remain important to promoting competition, diversity and localism.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/business/media/fcc-is-again-examining-looser-cross-ownership-rules.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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