FCC: Tax Incentives for Media Sales to Small Businesses, Women, Minorities

FCC: TAX INCENTIVES FOR MEDIA SALES TO SMALL BUSINESS, WOMEN, MINORITIES
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Federal Communications Commission officially asked Congress to pass a law that would give tax incentives to media companies that sell communications outlets to small businesses, including women and minorities. That came in a legislative proposal contained in the FCC's just-released triennial report on the steps the commission has taken to reduce the regulatory entry barriers for entrepreneurs and small businesses. The goal is to increase the diversity of voices, to foster economic competition and to promote the general welfare of the public. While they supported the tax-incentive policy, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein dissented in part from a report that they said shows that the FCC has not done much for minorities or small businesses. Commissioner Copps called it a "slapdash cataloging of miscellaneous commission actions over the past three years" and said the FCC failed both to meet its obligation to report its actions and to take any "meaningful" actions as it was. Commissioner Adelstein used his dissenting statement as an opportunity to criticize what he saw as the inequity of the FCC's granting of cable set-top-box waivers and its failure to grant blanket waivers for smaller operators from its viewability order. Both said the FCC's review of its media-ownership rules has not sufficiently addressed questions about the effects of consolidation on minorities raised by the court that remanded the rules for that review.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6510431.html?rssid=193

* Triennial Report to Congress on Market Entry Barriers for Small Businesses
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-181A1.doc

* Commissioner Copps
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-181A2.doc

* Commissioner Adelstein
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-181A3.doc