Diversity and Consolidation: You Can’t Do Both

Speaking at this year’s American Women in Radio and Television Leadership Summit, S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, gave the audience a look at his ongoing research on female and minority media ownership, first published in last fall’s groundbreaking Out of the Picture study.

With all five FCC Commissioners recently commenting on the need to increase the disgracefully low number of female and minority media owners, Turner’s study provides evidence of the devastating impact of consolidation on diverse owners.

Some key new findings include:

• Women and minorities are more likely to be local owners: 50 percent of their TV stations are locally owned and operated, compared to about 20 percent of all white-male or corporate-owned stations.

• Female and minority-owned stations are more likely to be independent: 22 percent of TV stations owned by women and 35 percent of minority-owned TV stations are independent affiliates, versus just 10 percent of white-male and corporate-owned stations.

• Female and minority-owned independent stations air more local news: Only 16 percent of white-male-owned independent stations air local news versus 30 percent of the remaining independent stations.

• Female-owned stations are more likely to employ female news directors: 40 percent of the female-owned TV stations had a female news director versus just 25 percent at the other stations.

Turner’s research shows the positive impact of increasing media ownership diversity. But pro-consolidation policies continue to drive out women and minority owners and raise insurmountable barriers that shut out prospective women and minority buyers.

The bottom line:

“The goals of increasing women and minority ownership and the goals of increasing media consolidation are diametrically opposed. You just can’t do both.”

Click here to read Turner’s speech

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.