11 Groups Ask FCC to Study Shared Services, Other Local TV Deals
The FCC should expand its media ownership studies to include research on several types of agreements between TV stations within a market to share news, personnel and equipment, all the comments on the coming work said. The American Cable Association (ACA), Free Press and nine nonprofits critical of media consolidation pointed to sharing agreements in filings posted Wednesday and Thursday to docket 09-182. Shared-services agreements, local marketing agreements and local news services were mentioned. TV executives have predicted additional deals of this kind and said they let stations air more news than they could on their own (CD Oct 28 p4).
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The commission should add to the list of nine studies that it proposed last month to pay outsiders to do for the 2010 quadrennial ownership review (CD June 7 p15), the groups said. The ACA -- long concerned about the prices that small cable operators must pay for broadcast programming -- sought a study of the number of agreements in which stations in a market negotiate cable and satellite-TV carriage through sharing agreements and duopolies. It asked for research on “the impact this reduced competition has on both the quality and quantity of local programming produced in the market."
At least 25 markets have shared services agreements, ranging in size from 18th-ranked Denver to No. 139 Duluth, Minn., said the Benton Foundation, Common Cause, Communications Workers of America, Media Alliance, National Hispanic Media Coalition and others. Raycom -- whose Honolulu deal is subject of an FCC complaint by co-signer Media Council Hawaii -- as well as Granite, Nexstar, and Sinclair “have extended their controls” through the pacts, the filing said. Prometheus Radio Project, National Organization for Women and United Church of Christ also signed it. The FCC “should fully examine the impact that these types of arrangements have on diversity, localism and competition in local markets,” they said: That could be done by looking at how the deals affect the amount of local news, variety of stories, news-staff size and local ad market.
Broadcasters say joint ventures add to or preserve local news, while a 2008 Project for Excellence in Journalism report said that results in airing the same or nearly identical content on competing stations, according to Free Press. “The FCC must account for and evaluate the impact of these types of joint ventures on the provision of local news from diverse and independent sources,” it said. “The ability of the ownership limits to promote diversity of local news and information is significantly eroded if contractual arrangements can be used as end-runs around the rules.”