Your Diocese

Michael Copps, a Catholic and one of two Democrats on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, spoke at the National Press Club March 3 about the public interest obligations of broadcasters at a time when fewer owners of broadcast outlets mean s less local coverage of communities. Copps is pictured in an undated photo.

(CNS photo/courtesy of FCC)

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Just how local are your local radio and TV stations?

The answer might depend on the amount of local programming they air. Today fewer owners live in the communities their stations serve, and with less local ownership comes less local programming.

It wasn't always that way. Michael Copps, a Catholic and one of two Democrats on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, said the United States, recognizing the regional differences in a vast country, chose many years ago -- before TV was a fixture in American homes -- to license broadcast stations on a local basis.

Copps spoke at the National Press Club in Washington March 3 during a discussion about the public interest obligations of broadcasters in the 21st century.

A sponsor of the event was the Public Interest, Public Airwaves Coalition. Among its members are the Benton Foundation, the Media Access Project, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ.

Copps talked about the latest boom to be lowered on local programming. On Feb. 29, Citadel Communications, the third-largest U.S. radio station owner, made sweeping changes at two of its biggest stations, WLS-AM in Chicago and WMAL-AM in Washington. Citadel's headquarters are in Las Vegas.

At WLS, virtually the entire news-gathering operation was given the boot. Citadel fired a dozen people without notice at three of its Washington stations. One of them was WMAL's Chris Core, who had hosted talk shows on the station for 34 years.

"He didn't even get a chance to tell his listeners goodbye," Copps said.

Citadel was pleading poverty as a reason for the cost-cutting, but Copps added, "We don't allow businesses to pollute the water or the air as a cost-cutting measure."

The latest wrinkle in the local ownership debate is a new cross-ownership proposal approved by the FCC Dec. 18. The new policy allows a newspaper in one of the 20 largest U.S. markets to buy a commercial TV station in the same market if the station is ranked fifth or worse in the market.

Copps cited a study that showed that TV stations, once owned by newspapers, devote, on average, four more minutes a day to news, "but that's mostly weather and sports," Copps said.

The downside in the study, according to Copps, was that other broadcast news operations began devoting less time to news because they could not compete with the pooled resources of the jointly owned newspaper-broadcast outlet.

The FCC has made some proposals on localism, and on March 6 extended its comment period allowing citizens to weigh in on them.

The proposals could require stations to convene community advisory boards to help determine public-interest programming, and have at least a bare-bones physical presence at the station during broadcast hours (many stations have automated programming), or even mandate the types and amount of local programming provided.

The new deadline is April 28; the old deadline was March 14. Similarly, the deadline for replying to those comments also was extended, from April 14 to June 11.

When issuing its localism proposals Dec. 18 -- the same date it OK'd the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership expansion -- the FCC said that having even just one human being at the station "can only increase the ability of the station to provide information of a local nature to the community of license, particularly in the event of severe weather or local emergency."

But one group of religious broadcasters, in comments to the localism proposal, blasted the proposals.

"The FCC must not force radio stations, especially religious broadcasters, to take advice from people who do not share their values," the consortium said, calling the proposals "unconstitutional mandates."

"Religious broadcasters who resist advice from those who don't share their values could face increased harassment, complaints and even loss of license for choosing to follow their own consciences, rather than allowing incompatible viewpoints to shape their programming," the consortium added.

The National Association of Broadcasters, in posting a "call to action" on its Web site, asked its members -- virtually every TV and radio station in the country -- to let the FCC know how well they are already serving their communities, from delivering emergency weather information to broadcasting AMBER alerts.

AMBER stands for America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response. It's a notification various media outlets broadcast to the general public when the police confirm that a child has been abducted. It is named for a 9-year-old Texas child named Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in 1996.

When the FCC's notice for proposed rule-making was issued, the other Democrat on the commission, Jonathan Adelstein, voted for it but indicated he was far from happy about it.

"If history is any guide," Adelstein said, "the odds are that the commission will either neglect to finalize these proposals, or when it comes time to finalize them, they may be so diluted as to render them meaningless."

Copps said broadcasters may lodge objections to localism rules since it is cheaper to automate programming and originate it from a single source, but "automated programming is not what's going to save 'terrestrial' broadcasting. It's local programming."

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Editor's Note: Comments on the FCC proposals may be filed online at: www.fcc.gov, by clicking on "For Consumers" and scrolling down the left-hand side to the link "How to Make a Comment."