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The FCC is about to begin a quadrennial review of its media ownership rules as required by the Telecom Act of 1996. Every four years the agency must "determine whether any of such rules are necessary in the public interest as the result of competition."

To assist in structuring the 2010 review process, the Media Bureau plans to hold workshops on November 2, 3 and 4 to discuss the scope and methodology of the proceeding and the analytical framework the Commission should use for conducting its review. The Commission is also seeking comments on structuring of the review proceeding.

The Commission's statutorily required periodic review encompasses five ownership rules includes: (1) the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, (2) the radio/television cross-ownership rule, (3) the local television ownership rule, (4) the local radio ownership rule, and (5) the dual network rule.

"We will explore these issues during three half-day sessions with a panel of policy scholars, a panel of public interest groups and a panel of broadcasters and media trade associations," the agency said in a release.

The moderator of each workshop will invite the panelists to present their views on questions relating to the scope and analytical framework of the media ownership review process. Some of these questions to be asked include:

• The existing rules limit concentration within a single industry and bilateral cross-ownership between two industries. Should the Commission continue to enforce limits of these types, or should it develop an alternative structure, such as determining an ownership limit for all media within a relevant market?
• What is the relationship between the Commission's longstanding policy goals of competition, diversity, and localism and the media ownership rules in the current media marketplace? How should we define them in that context?
• Is the competition goal best conceptualized as economic competition?
• If so, what approach should the FCC take to determine the relevant product and geographic markets? Are the relevant geographic markets local, national, both, or something else? Should the rules be analyzed within separate relevant product markets for delivered programming, advertising, and content production and/or something else?
• What analytical approaches should the Commission employ to determine whether common ownership of multiple media outlets increases or decreases competition in a relevant product market?
• How should the FCC assess competition in the market for delivered programming, given that there are no direct user fees for broadcast programming? Is the concept of innovation in programming relevant here?
• How should the FCC's analysis take into account recent changes in the media industry, such as the increased number of channels carried by cable and satellite operators, the transition to digital TV broadcasting, the decline of newspapers, and the increased use of the Internet for news and entertainment?
• What metric(s) should the Commission use to measure competition?
• How should the Commission connect those metrics to the structure of media ownership?

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