August 5, 1999
Re: | Review of the Commission's Regulations Governing Television Broadcasting, MM Docket No. 91-221; Television Satellite Stations Review of Policy and Rules, MM Docket No. 87-8; Review of the Commission's Regulations Governing Attribution of Broadcast and Cable/MDS Interests, MM Docket No. 94-150; Review of the Commission's Regulations and Policies Affecting Investment in the Broadcast Industry, MM Docket No. 92-51; Reexamination of the Commission's Cross-Interest Policy, MM Docket No. 87-154; Broadcast Television National Ownership Rules, MM Docket No. 96-222. |
I welcome today's long-overdue revision and clarification of the Commission's broadcast ownership and attribution rules. The decision today takes its direction largely from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, in which Congress decided to allow significantly increased concentration of ownership in the broadcast marketplace. It also takes into account recent, dramatic changes in the communications marketplace, as well as insights gained from experience with our previous rules. The result is a forward-looking regime that provides increased flexibility and clarity, while still avoiding the dangers of undue concentration of ownership of vital sources of news and information.
The media landscape has changed enormously since I joined the Commission in 1994. There was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 -- which set the stage for significant consolidation of ownership, especially in radio. There is the now-significant presence of DBS, which was just being launched a few years ago but now has over 10 million subscribers. There is the continued growth of cable, with system "clustering" rapidly replacing the crazy quilt ownership patterns of the last twenty years in major metropolitan areas. The financial interest and syndication and prime time access rules are gone. TV broadcasters are beginning their conversion to digital broadcasting. The Internet is experiencing explosive growth.
These and other changes make it timely (at best!) for us to conclude our long-pending ownership and attribution proceedings.
I believe our rules and policies must be based on the present and future characteristics of broadcasting, not our perceptions of the medium as it existed 50 or even five years ago. At the same time, broadcasting remains a distinctly special service -- with unique privileges and unique responsibilities.
Broadcasting continues to be the primary source of news and information for the American public. It is free and ubiquitous. No preexisting hookup or bottleneck provider stands between speaker and listener. Diversity of media ownership is fundamental to the preservation of our democratic values. The public benefits greatly from "diverse and antagonistic" voices in the broadcast marketplace. The special characteristics of broadcasting have been recognized by Congress, the courts, and this Commission.
It wasn't so long ago that broadcasters were limited to owning no more than 12 AM, 12 FM, and 12 TV stations, nationwide, with no more than two AM, two FM, and one TV station in any market. Yet today, some radio groups encompass several hundred stations, with as many as eight in a single market, and perhaps a TV station and an LMA as well.
I have long felt that our rules were susceptible to "gaming." We have been too willing to permit through the back door what we would not countenance through the front. We have been too willing to grant conditional waivers while we dithered about what the rules should be. As a consequence, we have penalized those who most diligently followed the letter and spirit of our rules, and rewarded those who "pushed the envelope" most aggressively. Today's decision should put us on a more defensible and sustainable course. Greater clarity in the rules -- and less subjectivity -- will promote fairness among market participants. It will also provide greater certainty to investors. And it should lead to more expeditious decisions by the Commission.
I am pleased that we are eliminating the worst anomalies of the old regime. Who can explain why LMAs are considered attributable interests when they involve radio stations, but not when they involve TV? Many LMAs have produced demonstrable programming and other public interest benefits for their communities. Others have not. I welcome our decision to attribute LMAs, as well as our decision to grandfather those that were entered into before November 5, 1996 - the date when all parties were clearly on notice of our intention to move in this direction. Those that meet our going-forward rules may continue, and we are giving those that are grandfathered generous relief.
I have previously raised concerns about the potential for an investor with a 49 percent ownership interest to exert "influence" over the affairs of a broadcast licensee, even in a corporation with a single majority shareholder. I support the compromise we have reached to adopt an "equity/debt plus" concept of attribution that limits the single majority shareholder exemption in situations involving a major program supplier or same-market media entity. These are the entities whose incentive to influence a broadcaster weighs most heavily in favor of attribution. Our targeted approach embodied in the "equity/debt plus" concept balances our competing concerns of maximizing the precision of our attribution rules, avoiding undue disruption of the flow of capital, and establishing a bright-line test that affords certainty to those planning transactions.
There are a few narrow areas where I would have preferred to go a different way from the majority, for reasons that have less to do with ownership concentration than with concerns about fundamental fairness. I believe that we have been too lenient in grandfathering situations that were previously allowed under conditional waivers -- waivers that were supposed to expire at the outcome of these proceedings. We started down the conditional waiver path because of a desire temporarily to accommodate major acquisitions, permitting them to close without awaiting a resolution of our broadcast ownership dockets. Everyone recognized when the conditional waivers were granted that the licensee would have to conform to the new rules, with six months to divest any nonconforming properties.
This accommodation became an albatross around our necks. And now we are perpetuating the waivers, creating a special class of broadcasters who, for as long as they own the stations, can own more properties in a market than their competitors. This isn't fair. It isn't good precedent. And it undermines our credibility in considering future conditional waiver requests in other contexts.
I also would have preferred a somewhat different result with respect to our revised one-to-a- market rule. In determining compliance with the voice test, I would count only independent radio and TV voices in the market. These are the media encompassed by this cross-service rule, and I believe it makes most sense to compare the number of radio and TV voices held jointly in a market only to the number of independent radio and TV voices remaining in that market. Today's item goes further, however, and also considers as voices daily newspapers and cable TV. I disagree with the inclusion of these media in the voice count.
Once we include newspapers and cable, it becomes difficult if not impossible to validly distinguish them from other media that arguably serve as a source of competition and diversity in the market, such as MDS, the Internet, cable overbuilds, and OVS systems. Rather than make arbitrary decisions on whether to include these media as "voices," it would be far simpler and administratively easier to count only radio and TV and, if necessary, to adjust the voice count accordingly. However, as the decision was made to include newspapers and cable, I do agree with the decision to limit those newspapers counted to those published and widely circulated in the market. I also agree that, if we must count cable, it should count as only one voice.
But, despite these misgivings -- as well as a more generalized concern that we have not adequately analyzed the cumulative effect of all the changes that have occurred as a result of the 1996 Act -- I support these orders as a compromise that I believe will provide a much stronger foundation for the future. As Senators Hollings and Dorgan observed in a letter to Chairman Kennard, "It is imperative . . . that the Commission remain mindful of the careful balancing struck in [the Telecommunications Act] between updating the rules to reflect changes in the marketplace and maintaining the robust diversity of voices, localism, and competition in the broadcast industry that was evident at the time of enactment." I believe that we have done so.