FCC's Lake Signals to Hill That Deals Have Been Getting Done

Federal Communications Commission Media Bureau chief Bill Lake says that the FCC has granted the sale of 36 full-power TV stations, representing 12 different deals, since mid-March, which it issued guidelines about deals with associated sharing arrangements.

That is according to Lake in prepared testimony for the June 11 media ownership hearing in the House Communications Subcommittee. Lake outlined various steps the FCC has taken regarding media ownership rules, including making TV joint sales agreements (JSAs) over 15% of ad time attributable as ownership interest, new processing guidance from the Media Bureau on processing TV station license transfers involving JSAs and other sharing agreements (broadcasters have sued the FCC over both those), and the decision to combine the congressionally mandated 2010 and 2014 media ownership quadrennial reviews into what will become a 2016 review -- June 30, 2016 is the target date for completion.

As to why the FCC has yet to produce a quadrennial review report to Congress years past the initial deadline, Lake pointed out that the FCC, under a previous chairman, had a media ownership item responsive to the review teed up in 2012 that could never get three votes needed for approval -- Republicans opposed it and some Democrats were concerned that the FCC had taken the action without sufficiently gauging its impact on ownership diversity. He said that the new timetable of June 2016 will allow for more input on how the market has changed since then.