UHF Discount, NCE Items Expected to Be Approved With Minimal Changes
The restoration of the UHF discount and two rule changes for noncommercial broadcast stations are expected to be approved with minimal changes at Thursday’s FCC commissioners’ meeting (see 1703300066), broadcast attorneys and industry officials told us. Along with restoring the discount, the commission is expected to allow noncommercial education stations to hold third-party fundraisers and to remove a requirement that board members of NCE stations provide personal information to the FCC as part of an ownership data collection effort. Though the vote count on the NCE items is unclear, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is expected to dissent on restoring the UHF discount, a forecast she supported in a tweet calling April “industry consolidation month at the FCC” (see 1704120062).
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The UHF discount item is expected to be largely similar to the draft version initially released by the FCC. The language would restore the discount pending the FCC’s consideration of possible changes to the national ownership cap in a rulemaking later in 2017. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., told Chairman Ajit Pai in a letter that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to alter the national ownership cap (see 1704130065), a position that Commissioner Mike O’Rielly previously maintained.
It’s against FCC procedure and arbitrary to issue an order that's conditional on a pending “hypothetical future action,” said Prometheus Radio Project and the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) in an ex parte filing in docket 13-236. After the digital transition took away the technical rationale for the UHF discount, it was used for “widespread evasion” of the 39 percent ownership cap, the public interest groups said. VHF stations “suffer from severe competitive handicaps that would surely justify a discount for them in their own right,” said broadcaster PMCM in an ex parte filing. “At a minimum it makes no sense to grant such a discount to UHF stations without granting a similar one to VHFs.”
The public TV-supported draft item that changes the reporting requirements for NCE stations will “render ownership data from a large and important segment of the media landscape incomplete and useless,” said United Church of Christ, Prometheus, MMP, Common Cause, Free Press and the National Hispanic Media Coalition in a joint filing in docket 07-294. NCE stations said the current rule, which required NCE board members to provide personal information to receive Restricted Use FCC Registration Numbers, would have a chilling effect on volunteers agreeing to sit on NCE boards. The draft item allows the use of Special Use FRNs instead, which require less personal data. The public interest groups don’t support “imposing unnecessary reporting requirements on NCEs,” but the information that would be gathered under the current rule “about ethnicity, race and gender” is “essential for the Commission to assess ownership diversity in broadcasting,” the joint filing said. Public TV stations and NCE industry officials support the draft item, though public broadcasting attorney Todd Gray of Gray Miller told us NCE officials have asked the FCC to stagger the filing dates that would be required by the draft item.
The second NCE item set for Thursday’s meeting would allow noncommercial stations that don’t receive CPB funding to fundraise for nonprofit third parties during 1 percent of their annual air time. The National Religious Broadcasters strongly support the item, and NPR opposed earlier proposals, the draft item is seen as a compromise, Gray said. Public TV stations asked that the draft item be changed to clarify that the standards for CPB-funded NCEs to receive waivers for third-party fundraising haven’t changed, Gray said.