CBA: Protect Our Diversity

Asked FCC for mandatory MVPD carriage for "deserving" low powers

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/4/2009 2:07:59 PM

The Community Broadcasters Associaton, which represents low-power TV stations, has been making its case to Washington for some help in getting carriage for stations it said provided the kind of programming and ownership diversity--opportunities for women, small businesses, and minorities--that the FCC is looking to promote.

That comes against a backdrop of the high-profile dust-up between African American targeted progammer TV One and would-be programmer Urban TV/Ion Media over the latter's request that the FCC give the Ion TV station multicast channels that would program Urban TV mandatory cable carriage as a way to promote diversity. It is also in the wake of acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps' announcement that he was already preparing the legal and factual underpinnings for the FCC's promotion of diversity.

CBA presented a survey, Diversity Defined, to FCC members last week, showing that 45% of the stations polled had "meaningful" minority ownership, with 60% having "significant" ownership by women.

CBA asked the FCC for a number of things, including mandatory MVPD carriage for "deserving" low powers and funding for DTV conversion that included mobile TV capacity.

CBA said it sent the survey to the Obama administration--which has made media diversity a priority of its tech policy agenda--and will be working the Hill, asking for action.

Talkback

» Submit Feedback

• For the last 7 yrs I have made it my mission to expose the monopoly of talk radio. It is the ONLY media format that is passive,repetaitve and saturates the Country every day all day.
  I wrote a post on consortiumnews.com titled Hocey Mom takes on Radio Right.
  The Internet is great, but like Hitler said we not only have to control the message,but must be able to repeat it and repeat it over and over until it becomes the truth.
  4 examples. 1. The media is liberally biased
  2. The Repubs are fiscal conservatives
  3. The Repubs support the troops
  4. The Repubs are the Pro life Party.
  Facts would prove that the Democrats are more fiscally conservative, support the troops far more and their platform would reduce the abortion rate by a much larger number than the Abstinence Only" policy.
  They have succeeded by monopolizing talk radio(91 percent is right wing).
  My fear is that they will do to Obama what they did to Clinton and possibly worse. The hate and rhetoric is escalating rapidly.

  
  Lynne Gillooly - 3/6/2009 2:46:36 PM EST
» Submit Feedback

Related Content

• Topics
• Author
• Most Popular Pages

No related content found.

Also by this author

• DISH Avoids STELA Noncom Mandate

• Boucher, Stearns Introduce Voluntary Spectrum Auction Bill

• FCC Proposes Sticking With Outdoor Antenna Standard For Distant Signals

• FCC Extends Comcast/NBCU Comment Period

• MMTC To FCC: Save Our Quality of Service

Also by John Eggerton

Most Popular Pages

No Top Articles

Product Wire

• Resource Center
• Browse Categories
• Browse Companies

Featured Company

• Grab Networks

  

  Created from the merger between Anystream and Voxant Media, Grab Networks offers a comprehensive video operating system and syndication network for profitably publishing video anywhere on the Internet. The system automatically manages, transcodes and tags video assets- turning cl..more

---

Most Recent Resources

• Multi Format Encoding for Efficient Content Repurposing
• The CIOs Guide to Videoconferencing Security Keeping Pace with th..
• Extracting and Preparing Metadata to Make Video Files Searchable
• Robust Encoding, Transcoding and Streaming Systems – Critical B..
• Simultaneous Multi-Format Encoding for Efficient Content Repurpos..