FCC's Clyburn Talks Ownership Diversity At NAB Capital Assets Conference, Urges CBS Radio To Consider Sales To Minorities, Women

Clyburn

FCC Commissioner MIGNON CLYBURN's luncheon talk at the NAB Capital Assets Conference WEDNESDAY (1/25) addressed her office's proposals to increase minority and female ownership of broadcast stations and encouraged CBS RADIO to sell to women and minority owners.

CLYBURN said she is "as tired of highlighting this factoid as you must be of hearing it: racial and/or ethnic minorities only hold a majority of the voting interests in approximately six percent of full-power commercial TV licenses and just over eight percent of commercial radio licenses. We are well aware, even if we were unfamiliar with the exact figures, about the lack of diversity in the media. What we rarely hear from folk like me, sad to say, is solutions or answers to the question of how we transform this dismal reality of the present, into a future that offers abundant opportunities for women and minorities, particularly when new full-power licenses are not readily available."

Her office's proposed solutions include the reinstatement of minority tax certificates, a pilot incubator program including waiving certain ownership restrictions for licensees who participate in incubating a new entrant or a disadvantaged business, eliminating “unconditional” most favored nation clauses and "unreasonable" alternative distribution method provisions in TV programming contracts with cable and satellite, and the introduction of ATSC 3.0 for digital TV transmission, the last point not included in her draft plan.  But, noting that CBS (unnamed in her remarks but clearly the subject of her statement) is spinning its radio division off for an Initial Public Offering, she said she "would encourage this group owner and others like it, to consider offers from women and minority-owned businesses seeking to enter or expand their presence in the radio business."  And she pointed to the lack of progress by noting, "That the NEW YORK CITY market does not have a single African American owned full-power commercial radio station, despite the fact that African-Americans make up 25 percent of that city’s population, is both surreal and distressing."

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