FCC Releases Media Ownership Studies; Seeks Public Review

The Federal Communications Commission released five research studies on media ownership. The five studies are intended to inform the FCC’s quadrennial review of its media ownership rules (MB Docket No. 09-182). The five studies were conducted by outside researchers and examine a range of issues that impact diversity, competition, and localism, three important policy goals of the media ownership rules.

The FCC will seek formal comment on all eleven studies within the context of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in this proceeding and requests that all comments on the studies be submitted to the FCC for consideration at that time. The FCC is releasing the studies earlier, in order to provide parties additional time to review the results and the underlying data.

In addition, the FCC's Media Bureau is releasing a Protective Order, which establishes procedures for public review of the proprietary portions of data sets created by the authors of the studies. A number of the authors of the media ownership studies created data sets using proprietary information licensed to the author or the FCC. The data sets, as well as related materials necessary to replicate the studies’ analyses, including market data provided to the authors of the studies as “Government Furnished Information,” will be made available for review and inspection by interested parties consistent with procedures contained in the Protective Order. Prior to reviewing the proprietary data sets, parties are required to sign and submit the Declaration, which was released as part of the Protective Order. Parties also may be able to obtain licenses from licensors of the underlying proprietary data to evaluate the results of the studies and/or to develop other studies that will contribute to the record in this proceeding.

For many of the studies, the data sets that the FCC will make available are only readable by, and require the user to be familiar with, specific statistical software programs (namely, Gauss, R, and Stata). The FCC has a limited number of on-site computing resources available for use by members of the public. Therefore we recommend that interested parties call in advance to schedule use of the Commission’s facilities. Persons with a scheduled appointment will be given priority over walk-in users.

• Media Ownership Study 3, How the Ownership Structure of Media Markets affects Civic Engagement and Political Knowledge, 2006-2008, by Lynn Vavreck, Simon Jackman, and Jeffrey B. Lewis: This report investigates whether the structure of media ownership in television markets affects the levels of civic/political engagement and political information of people living within those markets.
• Media Ownership Study 5, Station Ownership and the Provision and Consumption of Radio News, by Joel Waldfogel: This study aims to provide some evidence on the availability of radio news, along with evidence about the relationship between station ownership and the availability of news programming.
• Media Ownership Study 6, Less of the Same: The Lack of Local News on the Internet, by Matthew Hindman: For all of the discussion of local news online, there has been little systematic evidence about the local news environment on the Web. Arguments have been waged mostly with anecdotes and assumptions instead of comprehensive data. This study aims to change that.
• Media Ownership Study 7, Radio Station Ownership Structure and the Provision of Programming to Minority Audiences: Evidence from 2005-2009, by Joel Waldfogel: This study aims to assess recent evidence on the relationship between ownership structure and the provision of radio programming to minority (African-American and Hispanic) audiences.
• Media Ownership Study 9, A Theoretical Analysis of the Impact of Local Market Structure on the Range of Viewpoints Supplied, by Isabelle Brocas, Juan D. Carrillo, and Simon Wilkie: This study introduces a model of media market competition to examine the impact of ownership structure on the performance of the market in terms of informational efficiency and viewpoint diversity