Hawaiian Citizens Call Out Covert Media Consolidation

Posted October 7th, 2009 by Corie Wright

If it looks like consolidation and it sounds like consolidation, is it consolidation?

Over the past year, local television broadcasters have been quietly pooling their resources, and in some cases, completely merging news staff and operations. Most recently, in Honolulu, the CBS, NBC and MyNetwork affiliates announced that they will combine the staff and newsrooms of three local television stations to create the “largest television news operations” in Hawaii. The consolidated operation will be controlled by one company – Raycom Media.

The Federal Communications Commission has longstanding rules governing how many local broadcast stations can be controlled by a single company. The rules are in place to protect competition and viewpoint diversity in local communities. The Honolulu stations are trying to circumvent these rules, saying they’re not negotiating a merger, but are instead entering into a “shared services agreement.” Of course, to misquote Shakespeare, “A merger by any other name smells just as suspicious.”

As with consolidation, these joint service agreements lead to staff layoffs, fewer viewpoints and less local news.

Now local citizens are calling the stations out for their backdoor attempt at consolidation.

Today, the nonprofit group Media Council Hawaii, represented by the public interest law firm the Institute for Public Representation, filed an official complaint with the FCC. The complaint alleges that because Raycom will effectively control the local news programming, personnel and finances of all three stations, the shared services agreement is actually an illegal license transfer that violates FCC local television ownership rules.

Read the complaint.

The complaint asks the FCC to issue a “cease and desist order” preventing the de facto consolidation from taking place. Media Council Hawaii argues that this order is necessary to protect Hawaii television viewers because if the joint services agreement goes into force, there would be imminent danger of reduced competition, less local news coverage, less diversity of viewpoints and lower quality news programming.

Citizen action around the country helped to overturn disastrous media ownership changes at the FCC in 2003, and mounted a significant challenge to rule changes in 2007. Those changes are still being debated in the courts. We can’t let companies like Raycom skirt the rules we have fought so hard for, and sneak this kind of covert consolidation through. Not only would this deal be bad for the citizens of Hawaii, but it would set a dangerous precedent for other media companies looking to do the same.

For more information, read this earlier blog post and listen to an interview on Media Minutes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 3:37 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.