• by John Gaffney , October 2, 2002

You can’t say the FCC isn’t showing its cards as it reviews media ownership rules. The Commission this morning released 12 reports, some authored in house, most authored by independent research organizations. They run the gamut from radio ownership to network TV competition and they all have an underlying theme: the media business should be a free market.

According to FCC Media Ownership Group chairman Paul Gallant, the reports are a “first step” in evaluating the media ownership rules. The next step is public debate. However, each report takes a decided stance on whether the media it is covering will benefit or not from media ownership deregulation.

For example, while independent radio owners cry foul over Clear Channel’s continuing expansion and its effect of tightening playlists, the FCC sponsored report disagrees. “We investigated the change in diversity among playlists within the radio industry since the passage of the Telecom Act in 1996,” one FCC authored report states. “Overall, we found that song diversity, whether measured as the number of unique songs or the difference between top ten playlists has remained stable between March 1996 and March 2001. While playlists for stations within the same format have grown slightly more uniform across local markets, playlists for same format stations competing in the same local market have diverged.”

Another report hints that companies who own network TV stations would benefit from new acquisitions to be more competitive.

“The television broadcast industry has entered the new millennium in good shape, but with many challenges on the horizon,” states a working paper from today’s release on “Broadcast Television: Survivors In A Sea Of Competition.”

“Although the past decade has seen a continuing erosion of broadcast audience and advertising shares, television advertising prices and revenues have continued to grow. DBS and the expansion in cable availability and channel capacity have created an increasingly competitive environment for television broadcasting. This will lead to continuing audience fragmentation and further pressure on broadcast advertising revenues. The increasing competition for program production resources has led to an increase in production costs. The future profitability of the broadcast industry will depend on how it responds to competition and cost pressures, and on whether it can harness new technologies such as DTV and interactive services to its benefit.”

Other reports include several takes on local ownership of TV news, and newspapers, and five reports on radio ownership. They are available at www.fcc.com.