The best way for the FCC to encourage minority ownership in broadcasting is to neither loosen nor tighten ownership rules, says an upcoming study from University of Minnesota assistant professor-media law Christopher Terry. The study, "Regulatory Paralysis: the Answer to the Unanswerable Question of FCC Minority Policy," used FCC and NTIA media ownership data to determine that minority ownership in broadcasting expanded during the 17 years FCC rules were gridlocked by repeated remands to the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. “This suggests that the Supreme Court’s decision freeing the FCC from the longstanding regulatory impasse is potentially problematic because the decision permits the agency to restart the process of changing ownership rules,” the study said. “No one is going to like this,” because the data doesn’t support the tighter restrictions favored by public interest groups nor the deregulation pushed by NAB, Terry said in an interview. He said he believed before doing the study that proactive ownership regulation by the FCC was the best way to increase minority ownership, but that’s now changed. During the years of 3rd Circuit remands, Black-owned radio stations increased by nearly 65%, and Black-owned TV stations increased sixfold, the study said. Asian-Americans radio owners increased by 161%, Hispanic-owned radio by 161%, and Hispanic-owned TV stations by 323%, the study said. The large percentages are due in part to the still small numbers of minority-owned stations, the study conceded: "While these increases were notable, minority groups are still drastically underrepresented in terms of ownership percentage to population." The study also said the vast majority of those minority broadcast owners have just one or two stations. “If the FCC wants to increase diversity, then a minority station owner, locally operating a single or dual station group appears to provide a consistent structural model to follow,” it said. Minority-owned stations are more likely to offer diverse formats, and encouraging a proliferation of small minority-owned groups is the best way to create a diversity of voices and content, Terry said. “The dispute over minority ownership remains a debate framed around the number or percentage of stations women or minorities control when the substantive issue is that content that should be available at the market level is not being produced in sufficient quantity,” the study said. The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters didn’t comment. The study is expected to be published in the Michigan Technology Law Review later this year.

Petitions to intervene in the hearing proceeding on the license of WJBE(AM) Powell, Tennessee, are due May 2, said a notice in Thursday’s Federal Register (see 2203210047). The hearing proceeding concerns whether WJBE owner Joseph Armstrong is qualified to hold a broadcast license after being convicted in 2017 of filing fraudulent tax forms.

The FCC should “rethink” assessing forfeitures against broadcasters for “simple administrative errors,” said NAB in comments posted Tuesday on a $32,000 notice of apparent liability the FCC issued against Cumulus over equal employment opportunity filing violations at stations Cumulus has since sold. Cumulus didn’t upload a 2018 EEO report to public file for nearly a year past the due date because of an administrative “oversight” and an employee leaving the company, said the Cumulus NAL. “Inadvertent mistakes, especially those that do not trigger complaints and produce no cognizable harm, should not lead to monetary penalties,” NAB said. It doesn’t usually intervene in enforcement actions against individual broadcasters, but a broadcast industry official told us NAB is looking at intervening more often. The NAL “elevates ministerial compliance over substance, unfairly penalizing Cumulus for understandable and inevitable human error,” NAB said. If the FCC goes forward with a monetary forfeiture, it shouldn't adjust the amount upward due to Cumulus’s prior filing violations, it said: “Many of the prior violations cited by the NAL occurred prior to a 2018 transfer of control of Cumulus, and the Commission even relies on unrelated actions from 2003 to justify its proposed forfeiture.”

“Unnecessary and ill-advised” limitations on the deployment of new ATSC 3.0 multicast streams for broadcasters will harm viewers, said NAB in a call Friday with FCC Media Bureau staff, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. Broadcasters have launched additional multicast streams since the release of the FCC’s further NPRM on ATSC 3.0 multicasting “and will continue to launch additional programming in the future,” NAB said. NAB “continues to be willing to work with the Commission,” but the FCC should “move forward expeditiously without being distracted by bad faith arguments designed to frustrate innovation,” the group said.

The FCC Media Bureau proposed a $6,500 forfeiture for an Alabama low-power TV station that continued to operate after its post-incentive auction displacement construction permit expired, said an order and notice of apparent liability for forfeiture Monday. WSFG-LD Berry, Alabama, and it’s licensee, the estate of Ettie Clarke, also didn’t file a timely license to cover the application, the order said. The displacement CP was issued in June 2018 and expired in June 2021 when no license to cover the application was filed, the order said. The license application was eventually filed in December. Construction was completed on schedule in fall 2018, but the station overlooked the need to submit the application, the order said. “It is well settled that administrative oversight is not an excuse for failure to comply with the Commission’s rules,” the order said.

The updates to technical radio rules approved by the FCC in February take effect April 18, said a public notice Friday in docket 21-263. The changes include eliminating a restriction on AM transmitter power levels, harmonizing rules for radio stations on U.S. borders with treaty obligations, and deleting outdated interference rules that applied only to stations in Alaska (see 2202170046).

The FCC Media Bureau identified tentative selectees in 19 groups of mutually exclusive (MX) applications for noncommercial educational FM construction permits from the November NCE window, said a public notice Friday. The selectees include Good News Broadcasting Group’s application for Pinon, Arizona; San Tan Educational Media’s application for Alma, Colorado; and Krh Educational Foundation’s application for Liberal, Kansas. The bureau made the choices using an analysis based on which applicant would provide a first or second NCE radio station to at least 10% of the population in the proposed service area if the service area has at least 2,000 people, and favors the applicant serving the most people, the PN said. Petitions to deny the applications of the selectees are due 30 days after the order is published in the Federal Register.

NAB’s filings before the FCC seeking relaxed ownership restrictions contradict the group’s arguments to Congress opposing the American Music Fairness Act’s proposed performance royalty, said the musicFIRST Coalition in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 18-349. “If radio broadcasters have lost so much audience share that they need government intervention, the promotional value they claim to provide recording artists cannot be adequate compensation” for performers, said the coalition. NAB also argued broadcasters should be compensated for their content in support of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, the coalition noted. “The musicFIRST Coalition agrees with the NAB that distributors should adequately compensate content providers. But what is good for the goose must be good for the gander.” The FCC “should not rely on a party’s arguments when that party contemporaneously makes contrary arguments to other federal policy makers,” the coalition said. NAB didn't comment.

The full FCC denied an appeal of the Media Bureau’s rejection of an informal objection to the sale of three Florida radio stations by a company that argued it was the victim of racial discrimination, said an order in Thursday’s Daily Digest. UOBN Broadcasting filed an application for review against a Jan. 26, 2021, Media Bureau decision approving the transfer of WGGG(AM) Gainesville, WMOP(AM) Ocala and a translator station from SportsTalk to Hitmaker Music Group. UOBN said it had an agreement with SportsTalk that included an option to buy the stations and that it was passed over because of racial discrimination, the order said. SportsTalk told the FCC it didn't have a contractual obligation to UOBN. The FCC dismissed UOBN’s appeal procedurally for raising new arguments that hadn’t been presented to the bureau, and also on the merits for not sufficiently showing that the matter was “tainted” by discrimination and for relying on laws against employment discrimination that don’t apply to the sale of a broadcast station. “We conclude that UOBN has failed to demonstrate that the Bureau erred,” the order said.

An “entirely voluntary” system of “designated hitter” multilingual emergency alerts (see 2203100067) “is not sufficient” to ensure that communities receive multilingual alerts, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council told FCC Public Safety Bureau and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staff in a virtual meeting Thursday, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 21-346. A hybrid approach that combines a voluntary system with a “regulatory backstop” that assigns a station to be responsible for multilingual alerts in markets without volunteers would be more effective, MMTC said. The FCC would need to require notice in markets with a volunteer, and the FCC could hold lotteries for the assignment in markets without one, MMTC said. The FCC could also issue advisory letters approving designated hitter plans, the filing said.