There’s a deficit of information about broadcaster sharing...
There’s a deficit of information about broadcaster sharing agreements, the Government Accountability Office said in a 41-page report released Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1nOn1nv). It argued that the FCC “should determine whether it needs to collect additional data to understand the prevalence and…
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context of broadcast agreements and whether broadcaster agreements affect its media policy goals of competition, localism, and diversity,” which the FCC accepted and has begun acting on, including by “proposing disclosure of sharing agreements.” GAO had reviewed, from July 2013 to last month, relevant FCC dockets and interviewed industry stakeholders as well as FCC officials, it told Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who requested the report. “Consumer groups raised concerns that agreements in which stations share news resources can lead to duplicative content in local newscasts,” GAO said. “Station owners counter that the agreements are needed to allow some stations to continue providing news and allow other stations that previously did not provide news to begin doing so.” It provided details on the prevalence of such sharing agreements and in which markets they are more prominent.