Jackson Decries FCC’s 'Anti-Diversity' Agenda

Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Founder Rips DTV-Leasing Proposal, Multicast Must-Carry

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/30/2007 3:42:00 PM

On the eve of his planned appearance at a Federal Communications Commission hearing on the impact of media consolidation, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition founder the Rev. Jesse Jackson took aim at FCC chairman Kevin Martin's digital-TV-leasing proposal ("a poor 'consolation' prize for minorities) and what he called the chairman's "anti-diversity" agenda.

In a letter to Martin and the other FCC commissioners Tuesday, Jackson also put in a pitch for creating an independent task force on minority ownership issues before the FCC votes on new media-ownership rules, and he took issue with Martin's push for a la carte (he called it an "obsession") and multicast-must-carry rules ("welfare for well-heeled broadcasters"), saying both efforts would hurt minorities.

Martin has proposed allowing TV-station owners to lease excess digital capacity to minorities and other "designated entities" to program like a TV station, with the same must-carry rights and programming obligations as broadcasters. The FCC chairman called the effort a chance to increase the diversity of voices while overcoming the barriers to entry of buying or building a station.

Jackson instead called it a "kind of 'compensatory' diversity in programming and ownership" to "make up for the losses imposed by multicast must-carry and a la carte."

Jackson called the leasing proposal "objectionable and irrelevant," and echoed, though attributing it only to "one FCC commissioner," Jonathan Adelstein's contention that "media sharecropping isn't a viable alternative to media ownership."

Jackson said a la carte had been opposed by "nearly every minority program network and civil-rights organization" as "hindering minority programmers."

He called multicast must-carry -- which Martin pitched as benefiting minorities -- a "massive new and unjustified 'welfare for the rich' program that would reward well-heeled broadcasters at the expense of opportunity for emerging broadcasters from African-American, Hispanic [the crowd Martin had pitched on the program's minority-friendliness], women and other communities."

Martin touted his leasing proposal at Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH minority media conference in Washington, D.C., where the FCC chairman also said he would consider input from a diversity task force, although he did not think that needed to change a timetable for a media-ownership vote. Sources have since said that timetable called for a Dec. 18 vote.