Eight state AGs call for strict national audience reach limits

Attorneys general in eight states – Illinois, California, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia – called on the FCC to maintain strict national audience reach limits. In a filing to the FCC, the AGs argued that the FCC lacked the authority to change the national audience reach limits, as the FCC proposed, and that maintaining the UHF discount is “unjustified and arbitrary.”

“As the chief consumer protection and law enforcement officers in our respective states, we are responsible for promoting and defending the public interest,” the attorneys general wrote. “Raising the national audience reach limit and/or maintaining the UHF discount fails to further the public interest.”

Late last year, FCC Chairman Pai gutted the country’s media ownership rules, a gift to corporate media. Then he opened an FCC proceeding into the national audience reach limits – which the Commission lacks the authority to change, according to Pai’s fellow Republican on the Commission – and the UHF discount, a technically obsolete method of measuring audience reach that allows broadcast companies to skirt FCC rules. This is the proceeding the AGs weighed in on.

In the midst of this hack-and-slash deregulation, Sinclair filed for a $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media – unprecedented media consolidation the media ownership rules were designed to prevent. The Sinclair-Tribune merger would result in a massive broadcasting conglomerate that would reduce localism and viewpoint diversity, kill jobs, and harm consumers. But Sinclair is friendly with Chairman Pai and the Trump administration.

So suspicious was the timing of the media ownership rule deregulation and the Sinclair-Tribune merger that FCC Chairman Pai is now under investigation by the Commission’s inspector general for possible collusion. The investigation comes after Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Elijiah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter to the FCC’s inspector general asking for “assistance in investigating whether Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has taken actions to improperly benefit Sinclair Broadcast Group.” Chairman Pai declined to give full answers to the Congressmen.

Links:

Comments of Eight Attorneys General to the FCC (FCC, Feb. 27, 2018)

Pai’s FCC continues policy approach: giveaways for Sinclair, attacks on the poor (Speed Matters, Oct. 27, 2017)  

NABET-CWA joins broad coalition to stop Sinclair-Tribune merger (Speed Matters, Nov. 9, 2017)

FCC Chairman Pai under investigation for possible collusion with Sinclair (Speed Matters, Feb. 16, 2018)