MMTC to FCC: Put Cross-Ownership Study Out for Comment

Also asks commission to act on Katrina petition, diversity initiatives

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/7/2013 8:29:34 AM

The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council has asked the FCC to put its diversity study out for public comment. That came in a meeting Thursday between MMTC executive director David Honig and acting FCC chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and her staff, according to MMTC.

The FCC delayed action on its quadrennial media ownership rule review until the report on the impact of cross-ownership on media ownership diversity was completed -- MMTC submitted it to the commission last week.

MMTC updated the chairwoman on a number of issues, including MMTC's desire for the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to act on the Katrina petition before the 2013 hurricane season. If so, the FCC needs to act ASAP since the season technically started June 1 and even as Honig was meeting with Clyburn the first tropical storm of the season was bearing down on the East Coast, including Washington.

Last month, MMTC joined with the Independent Spanish Broadcasters Association and the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ asking for revisions to the FCC's emergency alert system (EAS) "to provide for the dissemination of multilingual local, state and national emergency information via the EAS to ensure that non-English speaking persons will have access to the same information as their English speaking neighbors in an emergency." MMTC is concerned that the FCC's testing of the EAS system was too focused on "saving those who speak English," which it says could prove deadly for non-English speakers.

MMTC also said the FCC should start voting on over 70 diversity proposals endorsed by MMTC, some of which were recommended by the FCC's own Advisory Committee on Diversity in the Digital Age; and to include data on minority and women-owned businesses in the Wireless Telecom Bureau's state of mobile wireless report. MMTC did not indicate how receptive the chairwoman was to their proposals, but media diversity has been one of her signature issues as a commissioner.