FCC chairman wants new channels for minority TV

John Dunbar

WASHINGTON — The nation’s chief telecommunications regulator wants to take advantage of the television industry’s transition to digital broadcasting to make channels available to small businesses that may be owned by minority programmers.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin promoted his long-dormant concept last Friday in the face of heavy criticism of his agency’s record on promoting minority ownership of media. The chairman spoke at a media and telecommunications symposium hosted by the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and its founder, the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Jackson, whose guests included four of the five members of the FCC, bemoaned the state of minority media ownership in America.

“We have a minority ownership crisis,” he said. “Too few own too much at the expense of too many.”

Jackson said the lack of minority owners means that people of color are depicted in the media as “less intelligent than we are, less hardworking than we are, less patriotic than we are and more violent.”

Jackson, along with Democratic FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, pushed hard for the creation of a minority media ownership task force that would make recommendations to the commission before it approves a new set of media ownership rules in the coming months.

Martin first floated his channel-leasing idea last March, but it has failed to gather much support among his fellow commissioners.

In February 2009, broadcasters will start transmitting signals in a digital format, which takes up less spectrum than analog signals. Martin wants broadcasters to lease the excess spectrum to small businesses that may be owned by minorities and women.

Such an arrangement would greatly reduce the barriers to entry for potential minority broadcasters.

Adelstein, apparently referring to Martin’s idea at a press conference during the symposium, said “media sharecropping isn’t a viable alternative to media ownership.”

Adelstein has been the prime mover behind the creation of a task force and has received some support from minority legislators on Capitol Hill. Adelstein and Copps both want such a task force to complete its work before the commission votes on media ownership limits.

Among the rules under consideration are a ban on cross-ownership of broadcast stations and newspapers, and limits on how many radio and television stations a company may own in a single market.

In 2003, Martin was one of three Republicans who voted to loosen media ownership rules, opposed by Copps and Adelstein. But a federal court invalidated the decision and the agency was forced to start the review process anew.

A Democratic commission might be more favorable to tightening ownership restrictions. When asked if the task force was a means of running out the clock in the hope that a Democrat would take over the White House and thus give the Democrats a majority on the commission, Adelstein rejected the notion.

“It’s not a delaying tactic,” he said. Such a task force could be created and reach conclusions in a relatively short period of time, he said.

Martin also said at the conference that he has circulated a proposal among the other commissioners that would create competition among cable television providers in apartments and other multiunit dwellings.

Generally, people who live in apartments are stuck with one cable television provider. Martin’s proposal would prohibit exclusive contracts between building owners and cable providers.

Martin said the proposal is favorable to minorities, because they represent a disproportionately larger share of apartment dwellers than non-minorities.

(Associated Press)