Let’s Do the Time Warp Again – The FCC’s Ownership Rules Remain Stuck in 1975

In its long-delayed 2010 and 2014 ownership review order, which was finally published in the Federal Register Nov 1, the Federal Communications Commission again asserted that “non-broadcast video programming distributors” are not meaningful competitors in local TV markets, virtually ignoring a host of 20th and 21st century technologies (including cable, satellite, mobile devices and the Internet) to retain its local TV ownership restriction. In an even more impressive imitation of an ostrich with its head in the sand, the FCC yet again retained the prohibition on the common ownership or operation of a daily newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market.

In maintaining a ban adopted in 1975, the FCC essentially concluded that little or nothing of import has changed in the news industry and the marketplace position of print newspapers and broadcast stations for the past 41 years – a nonsensical position on its face. In fact, the FCC appears stuck in a time warp, as merely stating the terms of the print newspaper rule reveals its arbitrariness in 2016. It prohibits common ownership of a broadcast outlet and a newspaper published four or more days per week in the dominant language in the market and circulated generally in the community of publication. The very notion of a rule hinging on a newspaper being printed and circulated shows its analog-era ancestry. It borders on the absurd to contend that the viewpoint diversity concerns supposedly sufficient to ban the common ownership of a station and a newspaper publishing a print edition four days a week magically disappear when the newspaper publishes online every day but publishes in print only three days a week. And this rule is still maintained by the agency that spent millions of taxpayer dollars and countless person hours on producing the National Broadband Plan.