WASHINGTON—DirecTV has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission that include a new study rebutting longstanding arguments that lifting ownership caps on station groups will lead to better local news.
In comments filed with the FCC over the years, the NAB and broadcast groups have argued that the total hours of local broadcast news coverage has increased in the last decade. One NAB’s study found that 154,445 local news telecasts aired in November 2021, an increase of nearly 16% from November 2016 and 35% from November 2011. In addition, more than 107,000 hours of local television news content aired in November 2021 across the country, an increase of more than 16% from November 2016 and over 40% from November 2011. That increase occurred even though the local TV industry was already highly concentrated in 2011.
The DirecTV study takes a very different approach. It looks at the diversity of local news content by examining the impact on local news in markets co-owned stations where a station group owns more than one TV station.
“Recent history shows that when broadcasters acquire a second, third, or fourth station in a local market, they consolidate news operations, leaving one newsroom where there had been two, three, or four, thus decreasing the quality of local news,” DirecTV said in a letter to the FCC that included the study. “This is not a speculative claim. In fact, in the context of the proposed Nexstar-Tegna transaction, we’ve filed evidence demonstrating that Nexstar, for example, has done this with every duopoly or triopoly it possesses.”
“We now show that these results also apply to broadcasters other than Nexstar,” the letter noted. “By our calculations, in the vast majority of markets in which any broadcaster holds a duopoly, triopoly, or quadropoly today, they have consolidated news operations. We also attach a presentation that describes the methodology behind these assertions. Specifically, we studied every existing Big Four broadcast duopoly, triopoly, and quadropoly that we could identify and found that when a broadcaster owns at least two Big Four stations in a market, they generally combine the news operations–station websites, news directors, and on-air talent–of those two, three, or four stations. In the majority of duopolies, triopolies, and quadropolies, the co-owned stations offered essentially the same local news.”
“The evidence conclusively demonstrates that broadcaster consolidation reduces competition, output, and quality in local news,” DirecTV concluded. “Accordingly, we urge the Commission to reject broadcasters’ proposals that would create more duopolies, triopolies, and quadropolies and decrease local news content.”
For the study, the researchers looked at any Nielsen DMA with a Big Four duopoly, triopoly, or quadropoly owned by one of America’s top ten broadcasters, excluding the ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox O&Os and found 98 duopolies, 15 triopolies, and 3 quadropolies included, totaling 253 Big Four affiliations.
The researchers then measured how often these stations groups consolidated their local online news to a single site, regardless of how many stations are involved; how they used one news director to determine what’s news across the two or three, or even four Big Four stations involved in any single DMA; and how they shared journalists and on-air news talent from one station to another, rather than operating distinctly.
That analysis found that
- For all broadcasters, 90.5% of news sites are shared in DMAs with joint ownership of multiple Big Four affiliations.
- For all broadcasters, 98.2% of News Directors are shared in DMAs with joint ownership of multiple Big Four affiliations.
- For all broadcasters, 97.3% of news talent are shared in DMAs with joint ownership of multiple Big Four affiliations.
- Among the top 10 station groups, 87.3% of news sites are shared in DMAs owned by Top 10 Broadcasters with joint ownership of multiple Big Four affiliations.
- 97.4% of News Directors are shared in DMAs owned by Top 10 Broadcasters with joint ownership of multiple Big Four affiliations.
- 96.1% of news talent are shared in DMAs owned by Top 10 Broadcasters with joint ownership of multiple Big Four affiliations.
Notably, the researchers did not include any non-Big Four combinations with any CW or MyNetwork affiliates or independents or any sidecar operations like Nexstar with White Knight, Mission, or Vaughan, or Sinclair with Cunningham, Deerfield, or Roberts for example. If those were included it is likely that the results would have been even stronger.
DirecTV filed the study and comments as part of the FCC Quadrennial Review of Ownership Rules.
