JUAN WILLIAMS: IN THE NAME OF DIVERSITY THE FEDS TARGET A BLACK TV STATION OWNER
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303824204579421732340754044?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion&mg=reno64-wsj
How many black people own a broadcast television station in the United States? The answer is one: Armstrong Williams. I know this because he’s a friend.
So imagine my surprise when I heard that the Federal Communications Commission is currently considering pulling the financial rug from under him by changing its regulations to—get this—promote diversity.
The reason for the proposed rules shift is that Mr. Williams’s two television stations operate under a so-called sidecar agreement with a larger broadcast company. Sinclair Broadcasting, the larger, white-owned firm, leverages its clout in the market to get better deals from advertisers for the two stations in return for a percentage of Mr. Williams’ revenues.
This arrangement is not a token deal. Similar agreements are common in the television industry. The difference is that typically all the players are white. Nevertheless, the FCC is proposing new restrictions that would make it harder for broadcast companies to control two stations operating in the same market.
Armstrong Williams Armstrong Williams
The government is concerned that the large broadcast companies are using these sales and services agreements with smaller owners to circumvent current rules intended to create diversity of broadcast property ownership. But without these agreements, there would be no black owners because of “the realities of the current marketplace,” says Jane Mago, general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters.
The black-owned stations simply lack the economic scale to get adequate advertising rates to pay their bills or even buy the station. For example, the bank that lent Mr. Williams $50 million to buy his stations did so with the understanding that he had the agreement with Sinclair, the much bigger firm.
In the last 10 years, the number of black-owned commercial television outlets licensed to black-owned companies has dropped to three from 21, the result of general market consolidation and some bankruptcies. Of the three remaining, Mr. Williams owns two and the third belongs to Tougaloo College, a historically black institution in Jackson, Miss.
A change in FCC rules would do more than damage Mr. Williams. His stations serve the areas of Flint, Mich., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., both of which have large minority populations. For many years Mr. Williams, a well-known media personality, has been actively involved in shaping local public-affairs programs that speak to minority concerns as a way to boost his own audience. Losing his TV stations means the communities also will lose broadcast content that reflects a minority perspective.
Similarly, Pervis Parker, the general manager of the station purchased by Tougaloo in 2012 under a sidecar deal with American Spirit Media, recently told an FCC commissioner that the joint operation has provided the financing to “reinvigorate this station and expand its local services” to a heavily black market in Jackson.
David Smith, the owner of Sinclair Broadcasting—currently the largest owner of independent broadcast stations in the U.S.—makes no apologies for his deal with Mr. Williams. “We are in this to make money,” he told me. Sinclair draws some profit from the smaller, minority-owned stations, but 70% of the revenue goes to the smaller stations. The fact that Sinclair sold properties to Armstrong Williams, a successful, politically conservative media personality, should be a plus—a rare gesture of racial inclusion.
The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters once opposed joint sales and services deals. As the association’s executive director James L. Winston recently wrote the FCC, “they appeared to be mere gimmicks for group licensees to avoid the intent of the local ownership rules.” But he told the FCC that the group changed its position because of “the precipitous fall-off of African-American television ownership in the past few years.” Instead of calling for an end to joint operation agreements, the association proposes to let these deals remain in place with annual reports on progress the smaller station is making on efforts to take control of advertising sales.
My suspicion is that liberals at the FCC who claim to be interested in promoting diverse broadcast ownership lose interest if the owner is a conservative like Armstrong Williams. They want diversity—but not of the political kind.
Mr. Williams is a political analyst for Fox News and a columnist for the Hill.
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