NAB Defends Ownership Change...As Far As It Goes
Holding nose, National Association of Broadcasters sides with FCC's crossownership order to beat back media-consolidation critics
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/6/2008 6:55:00 PM
The National Association of Broadcasters weighed in Tuesday in support of the FCC's decision to loosen the newspaper/broadcast crossownership rules.
Actually, broadcasters, including NAB, don't love the change. In fact they have taken the FCC to court over it because they believe it is not deregulatory enough.
But in a filing at the FCC, the NAB came down in support of the rules change in an effort to counter the arguments of media-consolidation critics who say the rule change was too deregulatory.
NAB called the FCC order a modest reform that made no changes to the local TV or radio ownership rules (NAB had wanted the FCC to loosen those, and excise the newspaper-broadcast crossownership ban entirely).
"There is no reason for the Commission to retreat from its recent modest revisions to the outmoded newspaper cross-ownership prohibition," NAB said, "which had not been reformed since its adoption in 1975. Claims in the petition that the 'exceptions' could 'swallow' the revised rule and somehow harm the public interest are unmeritorious."
Critics of the "modest" deregulation had argued that the FCC's qualifying test for crossownership were loopholes rather than hurdles. NAB said that, instead, they were a "high hurdle."
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said his intention was only to loosen the cross-ownership rule and went further to assert that loosening the radio and TV local ownership caps was not in the public interest. He has called the newspaper-broadcast crossownership change a moderate step that is responsive to activist concerns about media consolidation.
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Local radio and TV have been strugling with the hgih energyg prcices .
Tomm - 5/6/2008 10:19:00 PM EDT
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