Por: Inside Radio
Detail of a radio studio
The Federal Communications Commission has been a matador waving a red cape in front of broadcasters bullish about relaxing media ownership regulations. Now a half dozen radio groups are charging forward hoping to see AM/FM subcaps gored for good.
The groups—Alpha Media, Connoisseur Media, East Arkansas Broadcasters, Galaxy Communications, Jackson Radio Works and Roberts Communications—sense there’s an opening after the FCC told a federal appeals court that it “intends to act” on a request filed by the National Association of Broadcasters in December. In its petition for reconsideration the NAB specifically asks the FCC to reconsider its decision to maintain its radio-TV and newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership prohibitions. It also seeks to reverse the agency’s decision to retain limits on television station ownership, while also ratcheting up the rule by putting limits on TV joint sales and shared services agreements. But it omitted a request to the Commission to take a second look at the decision to leave current radio ownership subcaps untouched.
So the radio groups are requesting the FCC expand its review to including those limits. “We believe the Commission should use this opportunity to reach beyond the specific requests from NAB in order to reconsider its continued defense of the AM/FM subcaps,” they write in a letter to the agency.
The subcaps currently limit an owner to no more than five stations on either the AM or FM band in the largest of markets. In deciding to keep the subcaps in place last August the FCC said it still saw enough “differences” between the two services to justify the limits. “We found that the subcaps remained necessary to promote new entry and to account for the technological and marketplace differences between AM and FM stations and thereby promote competition,” the order said. The FCC also rejected the argument that FM translators are closing the gap, saying they “have not yet significantly impacted the technological and marketplace differences between AM and FM stations.”
But the broadcasters argue the dynamics that may have once differentiated the two “no longer exist” thanks to the use of FM translators by AM stations as well as the growth of online streaming and digital radio technology. “The Commission should take this opportunity to correct its error and reconsider and eliminate the AM/FM subcaps,” they write.
In addition to the merits of abolishing subcap limits the broadcasters may also need to clear a procedural hurdle. Critics are likely to say the FCC should focus its attention to what was actually included in the petitions for reconsideration filed by the NAB and others, none of which focused on the subcap limits. But the six groups hope the Commission will take a “sweeping” assessment and see the process as “an outgrowth” of the ongoing rulemaking proceeding, which included a review of subcap limits dating to its 2010 quadrennial review. They also point out that several companies also addressed the subcap regulations in comments filed with the FCC as part of the original rulemaking.
Vía: Inside Radio
