Small TV Stations to FCC: We Need Shared Services Agreements

Small-market television station representatives met with Federal Communications Commission staffers Dec. 19 to make their case for shared service agreements and other similar arrangements, pointing out they can be a local programming lifeline for stations whose pre-tax profit average plummeted by 95% between 1999 and 2009.

The FCC is preparing to vote, as part of a combined rulemaking proposal and inquiry, to look into whether those joint station arrangements, which can include joint operations, sales and news, violate the FCC's local ownership caps, which it plans to retain as part of the rulemaking portion of the item.

In their pitch to staffers with FCC Commissioners Robert McDowell and Mignon Clyburn, representatives of the Coalition of Smaller-Market Television Stations, the markets where FCC rules limit joint ownership, said that such agreements allow stations to preserve local -programming. They also tried to put in context the financial pressures on smaller stations that make such arrangements necessary. According to data submitted to the FCC and based on NAB TV financial Surveys, the pre-tax profit average for markets 50-210 went from $908,462 in 1999 to only $42,003 in 2009, the last year for which figures were shown. That is a drop of 95.4%. The figures were only slightly better for Big Four network affiliates, dropping from a $1,096,054 average pre-tax profit in 1999 to only $131,863 in 2009, down 88%. The coalition cited what it said were "real-world" examples of where SSA's has "saved and expanded local public service and diversity in news operations."