Minority Media Ownership Drops. Where’s the FCC?

Free Press today released Out of the Picture 2007, an updated analysis of the impact of media consolidation on minority and female TV station ownership.

The report updates the results from last year’s Out of the Picture study — the first complete assessment of female and minority ownership of commercial broadcast TV stations. The new data suggests that the future of minority TV station ownership is in jeopardy.

Among the most alarming new findings:

• From October 2006 to October 2007, the number of minority-owned commercial TV stations decreased by 8.5 percent.
• African-American TV station ownership dropped by 60 percent — as the total number of black-owned TV stations fell from 19 to 8 in just a single year.
• People of color now own just five of the 845 “big four” network-affiliated stations — a 62 percent decline from October 2006.

Much of the decline can be attributed to the bankruptcy and subsequent change in ownership of a single company — Granite Broadcasting, formerly the country’s largest minority-owned broadcast television company.

Minority television ownership is in such a precarious state that the loss of a single minority-owned company results in a disastrous decline.

Despite the worsening crisis of minority ownership, the FCC has yet to even conduct an accurate count of minority-owned stations. The most recent FCC study on this issue failed to identify 69 percent of minority TV station owners and 75 percent of female owners.

The FCC’s failure to address this issue in any meaningful way is a disgrace. You can’t separate this crisis from the unrelenting push for more media consolidation. And you can’t fix the situation if you allow a few big companies to swallow up more local stations — yet that’s exactly what FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is trying to do.

The best, most effective way to boost minority and female ownership is by rolling back consolidation. Ignoring the facts won’t change them.

Read Out of the Picture 2007 at http://www.stopbigmedia.com/files/otp2007.pdf

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