September 2016

A new study says broadcasters treat women better overall than cable or streaming networks do. Forty-one percent of major characters on broadcast shows were female during the 2015-16 TV season, compared with just 39 percent on streaming platforms and 28 percent on cable, according to a study by San Diego State professor Martha M. Lauzen.

Moreover, broadcasters offered more racially diverse programming, with black females comprising 17 percent of all characters – a historic high. Five percent of the female characters on broadcast networks were Latina; only 3 percent of those on cable and streaming outlets were. But the report, “Boxed In 2015-16: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in Television,” made it clear there is plenty of room for improvement everywhere when it comes to gender parity, both in front of and behind the camera.

The American Cable Association has told the Federal Communications Commission that it needs to rethink its requirement of an unlimited data usage offering for the top two performance tiers as a quid pro quo for getting broadband buildout subsidies. Verizon told the FCC that there was no evidence that such an offering was reasonably comparable to urban broadband offerings, the standard the FCC used for requirements for lower tiers of service. ACA said it agreed that the FCC's rationale was "thin" and suggested the CAF approach needed to be fattened with more data.

"Given that it has provided insufficient support for its proposal, the Commission should reconsider its decision, gather evidence about data usage," ACA told the FCC, "allowances in urban offerings for these top two performance tiers, and use these data to establish a 'reasonably comparable' requirement for data usage allowances."