AFTRA – Files Comments On Media Ownership Limits.

Comments filed this week by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) regarding the FCC’s review of media ownership rules — in conjunction with the Writers Guild of America, East — aver that “promoting viewpoint diversity must continue to be the commission’s primary goal in its mission to protect the public interest,” and therefore the unions call for restrictions to remain in place for each of the rules being reviewed.

The document clearly calls on the FCC to mandate source diversity — defined as independent ownership over media outlets — as well, because media conglomerates do not provide distinct media voices for their own properties. AFTRA says it is “critically essential for protecting not only the delivery of diverse viewpoints in news and information, but also for protecting against a loss of local control over the media and anti-competitive business practices that ultimately harm the media industries and our culture.”

AFTRA National President John Connolly said, “AFTRA and its members have a unique inside perspective on the urgent need to maintain the remaining ownership rules. We represent thousands of those professionals who work in the newsrooms and on the programming and entertainment that have been and will continue to be negatively impacted by further media consolidation.”

AFTRA has been integrally involved in calling the FCC to task since before the passage of the Telecommunications Act, which weakened ownership rules in 1996. The union has previously filed comments in matters relating to the national television ownership rule, the local radio ownership rule, and the effects of consolidation in the broadcast industry.

The filing states it is indeed “necessary and appropriate for the Commission to maintain the remaining ownership rules in order to protect diversity and localism in the news and information available to the general public, to protect against anti-competitive business practices, and to prevent any further erosion of innovation in media programming.”

AFTRA’s filing with WGA,E focuses primarily on the lack of adequate and appropriate research that has been conducted by the FCC and highlights that:

Studies by other groups, including the Future of Music Coalition, demonstrate that the massive consolidation in the radio industry over the past six years has resulted in a sharp decrease in the diversity of music available in local communities, to the detriment of the radio and sound recordings industries.

The quantity of media outlets does not mean that people substitute between different media outlets for news, but rather that different media complement each other, i.e., people who get more news from one source such as television, are also likely to get more news from a second source, such as a daily newspaper. Therefore, “reduced access to news in any medium could lead consumers to get significantly less news generally, as they would be less likely to seek out news from other media.”

FCC studies concluded that network-owned stations outperform affiliates, indicating a level of “quality” associated with ownership by larger companies. However, the study did not review such measures of quality over time; rather, it only compared stations operating in a consolidated marketplace with the cost pressures caused by the horizontal and vertical integration of media companies.

Although media companies may claim they do not exert control over news decisions in the local markets, the union’s experience illustrates otherwise. “Local broadcast station contract negotiations, for example, are generally conducted by corporate, rather than local station representatives, with corporate demands often taking precedence over local issues,” explains Connolly. “And our journalist members know that their general managers often receive mandates regarding the types of stories to be investigated and reported. There are several examples of local stories being ‘killed’ because they dealt with topics that corporate management did not want to see reported.”

AFTRA is the labor union representing 80,000 members nationwide including television and radio news reporters, sportscasters, announcers, disc jockeys, producers, writers and other on- and off-air broadcast employees as well as actors, singers and performers on dramatic programs, game shows, talk and variety shows, working at networks and in stations of varying size. In addition, AFTRA represents royalty artists and background singers whose sound recordings are played on radio stations, and performers on the Internet, CD-ROMs and all media.

To view full text of comments CLICK below:

http://www.aftra.org/resources/pr/0103/comments.html