WASHINGTON—NAB officials continued their push to end strict ownership caps on station groups during a recent meeting with Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Olivia Trusty and her Senior Legal Advisor Marcus Maher.
During the July 23 meeting, which was disclosed in a July 27 filing with the agency, NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt, NAB chief legal officer Rick Kaplan, and others others urged Commissioner Trusty to support replacement of the rigid 39 percent national TV cap with an approach that would give the Commission flexibility to approve TV station transactions that serve the public interest, while preserving its authority to review all transactions to guard against the possibility that a TV station merger could raise public interest concerns.
In addition, the NAB stressed the importance of expeditious FCC action on the pending 2022 quadrennial ownership review, given the vital need for elimination (or at least substantial reform) of the 30-year-old local radio ownership caps.
The filing noted that the NAB’s representatives began by reemphasizing the urgent need to repeal the analog-era national TV ownership limit.
“The current national TV rule dates from a time before the emergence and rapid growth of video streaming services, social media giants, massive digital advertising platforms, and smart devices ranging from phones to televisions,” the filing describing the meeting noted. “That rule is now not only unnecessary but affirmatively harmful. It prevents TV broadcasters – and only broadcasters – from gaining the scale needed to reach more viewers to better attract advertisers, and thereby earn the revenues required to invest in program acquisition and production, including local news, which is vital in today’s highly competitive video and advertising markets.”
“In short, scale allows broadcasters to offer quality services locally, especially in mid-sized and small markets with limited advertising bases, while the 39 percent cap only serves to limit the resources available to pay for localism,” the filing continued.
In terms of the pending quadrennial review, the filing stressed that “[l]ocal radio broadcasters cannot survive in today’s digital audio and advertising markets while hamstrung by three decades-old restrictions on their scale. NAB has documented at length how online and multichannel platforms dominate today’s audio marketplace and how digital advertising providers dominate local ad markets, to the detriment of local radio stations and the services they are able to offer in local communities…As NAB previously explained and the Commission previously recognized, localism is an expensive value, and the radio `industry’s ability to function in the ‘public interest, convenience, and necessity’ is fundamentally premised on its economic viability.’ Today, that viability is in serious question, and the radio industry requires regulatory relief now.”
The full letter describing the meeting is available here.
