FCC Staffers Updating Report on Barriers to Minorities, Women
Career FCC staffers are updating an overdue report to Congress on hurdles minorities, small businesses and women face in the media and telecom industries which Chairman Julius Genachowski will soon seek a vote on, agency officials said. The triennial report, due last Dec. 31, is mandated by Section 257 the Telecom Act to cover the past three years of work the commission has done to improve such constituents’ access to the industries and describe barriers that are faced, agency and industry officials said. Advocates for minorities said they'll closely scrutinize the document when it’s publicized to get a sense of what steps Genachowski is taking to reduce barriers to entry.
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Career staffers have been asked to revise the report to update information in it, with the bulk of the work being done by the Office of Communications Business Opportunities (OCBO), commission officials said. Director Thomas Reed is believed to be doing much of that work. The Section 257 study was circulated Jan. 8, the FCC’s website said. It’s since effectively been pulled from circulation because OCBO is making revisions, though technically it remains circulating, commission officials said. The report will cover the years 2007 through 2009, agency officials said. An agency spokesman and Reed declined to comment on the pending item.
The report ought to be recirculated soon, at which point FCC members will make suggestions about further improvements, agency officials predicted. At that time, Genachowski’s office will make a renewed push to get all commissioners to approve the item, a senior commission official said. At a conference last month on minority access to investments, several regulators discussed what they'd like to see in the report, with Commissioner Meredith Baker saying she hopes it will address low-power FM and Commissioner Robert McDowell noting many new ideas were being incorporated into the document (CD July 20 p2). Minority advocates told us they have hopes of their own for the report, desiring a comprehensive document that goes beyond the last one, issued 11 months late, in December 2007, http://xrl.us/bhutef.
"We've been waiting for this report for months,” said Executive Director David Honig of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, at whose conference the document was discussed. “We pointed out, as have members of Congress, that it is very late. It would be good if we knew a firm date by when the commission was going to comply with the statute and produce a report.” Though it’s “way overdue for the commission to focus on this, it’s good that they are,” Honig added.
Some members of an FCC advisory committee on diversity hope the Section 257 study discusses funding studies on the Supreme Court’s Adarand ruling limiting government set-asides for certain groups, said panel Chairman Henry Rivera. He and other panelists also hope the report discusses moving AM stations to the spectrum now used by TV channels 5 and 6 and changing designated entity rules to aide minorities’ getting wireless licenses, Rivera said. “We're very pleased the commission is turning to it,” said Rivera, a former commissioner now representing communications companies at Wiley Rein. “It’s important that the Commission focus on barriers to entry and what the commission intends to do about these things.”