YES: It Is About Providing Better Service to Consumers
By William Dean Singleton
The Salt Lake Tribune
I am pleased to appear today to discuss the compelling reasons for eliminating the Federal Communications Commission's long-outdated and counterproductive ban on newspaper/ broadcast cross-ownership.
The ban is the last vestige of a series of "one outlet per customer" local media-ownership restrictions adopted by the FCC in the 1960s and 1970s. Of these limitations, only the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule has remained completely unchanged. All of the commission's other restrictions on broadcast ownership have been either eliminated or significantly relaxed over the years. Only newspapers have been completely barred from participating in the broadcast markets of their communities.
This inaction on the part of the FCC is not for a lack of evidence. To the contrary, in four exhaustive proceedings over the past six years, the agency has accumulated a mountain of evidence supporting the repeal of the cross-ownership ban.
In 1975, when the FCC adopted the ban, many newspapers were allowed to keep their broadcast stations. Forty or so of these grandfathered communities still exist. These communities take the guesswork out of eliminating the ban. They have provided the commission with illustrative case studies of the substantial public-interest benefits that will result from repeal. Representing the full gamut of market sizes, the record shows that they have consistently provided their communities with unmatched levels of service.
At the same time, there is simply no evidence that the grandfathered situations have threatened competition in their local markets. To the contrary, there is substantial evidence showing that even the smallest markets containing newspaper/broadcast combinations remain vibrantly diverse and competitive.
The evidence offered by grandfathered communities further shows that co-owned outlets generally present diverse perspectives on news and informational issues. Jointly owned newspapers and broadcast stations have strong economic and professional incentives to, and do in practice, avoid coordinating their viewpoints. Local autonomy and editorial freedom is the tradition of newspapers, and the same principles apply to the operation of local stations owned by newspapers.
The evidence presented by newspaper publishers and other parties has been confirmed by several recent studies. A study commissioned by the FCC specifically found that "affiliates co-owned with newspapers experience noticeably greater success under our measures of quality and quantity of local news programming than other network affiliates." The results of a five-year study released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism at Columbia University echoes these findings. That study concluded that "stations in cross-ownership situations were more than twice as likely to receive an 'A' grade than were other stations" and that, on the whole, these stations "were more likely to do stories that focused on important community issues, [and] more likely to provide a wide mix of opinions . . . ."
Let me offer what I believe would happen close to home in my newspaper markets:
Fairbanks, Alaska, is perhaps the most remote, isolated community in America. There are five commercial television stations in the market. All struggle financially. Under today's rules, my newspaper thrives with an award-winning news presentation, while the television stations struggle to broadcast even a small amount of local news. There are no commercial news radio stations. In central and northern Alaska, many communities cannot get my newspaper delivered, but they can get radio and television. They deserve more.
In Eureka, Calif., in another remote section of the country, there are four commercial television stations. The strongest station has a news staff of 11, and the other three don't produce substantive local newscasts at all. Imagine the community service we could provide by putting these newspaper resources behind television and radio news, especially if we purchase a station that produces no news today.
In Pittsfield, Mass., I own a newspaper that covers the western quadrant of Massachusetts. There is no television station there, and never has been. If this rule is changed, we could put a station on the air that provided local TV news for the first time ever.
Newspapers will add new resources to struggling television and radio enterprises, and those broadcast outlets will strengthen newspapers as the number of media choices continue to explode in a changing media environment.
If the FCC's decision is based solely on the record evidence -- and not on political emotions -- the commission will be compelled to eliminate the archaic and wholly unnecessary cross-ownership ban.
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William Dean Singleton is chief executive officer of MediaNews Group Inc. and immediate past chairman of the board of the Newspaper Association of America.