FCC Diversity Committee Members Push for Changes to Incubator Draft
The FCC draft incubator order should be changed to prevent incubation in small markets from leading to ownership waivers in large markets, said members of the agency's Diversity and Digital Empowerment in a meeting with Media Bureau staff Friday, said…
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a filing posted Monday in docket 17-289. The committee members included Multicultural Media, Internet and Telecom Council Senior Adviser David Honig, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President James Winston and Diane Sutter, president of ShootingStar Broadcasting. Bayou Broadcasting CEO DuJuan McCoy was also present, and the filing said the committee members spoke on the behalf of former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera. With Rivera, the members made up the group that authored the ACDDE's position on incubators. The draft order runs counter to several of the diversity committee’s unanimous recommendations about how an incubator program should operate (see 1807120053). A provision in the draft that allows waivers granted to incentivize participation to be transferred to “comparable markets” would allow “incubation in a modest sized, and often not very diverse, 45-voices market like Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pennsylvania, (Metro Rank 77), to facilitate the securing of a waiver for a 6th FM station in New York City,” the members said. This “would have the unintended effect of deeply diminishing the likelihood that incubation would be used in the top 50 markets,” they said. The committee members said they are “at peace” with the draft order using the new entrant standard for determining eligibility, but it should be modified to acknowledge that the “Overcoming Disadvantages Preference” standard could be used if the new entrant method doesn’t work out. They asked for similar textual acknowledgement of other concepts in the draft, such as the eventual inclusion of TV incubators, and efforts to reach “mission-based entities” such as historically black colleges and universities. The members want the agency to push Congress to adopt policies that would allow tax relief to be an alternative incentive to incubating companies.