MMTC Comments Call on FCC to Kill Outdated Rules

RADIO ONLINE | , , | :am CT

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) submitted comments to the FCC to reiterate its support of the statements made in the group's previous petition for rulemaking. In light of the distressed state of the radio industry, MMTC urges the Commission to take action and revise or delete certain "outdated and ineffective rules" to improve the general state of the radio broadcasting industry.

MMTC maintains that revising these rules would promote public service, public safety, minority entrepreneurship and democracy. The group also says that the rule revisions will provide the American public with the opportunity to benefit from the education and experience of listening to a divers array of viewpoints and perspectives.

The broadcasting industry, MMTC says, is suffering an economic paralysis leaving minority broadcasters "grasping for life support," and has all but destroyed the broadcasting industry's "equity value" while "competition from new technologies and the Internet challenge radio broadcasters' economic stability."

The economic problems in the radio industry are compounded by what MMTC says are "archaic broadcast engineering rules" that operate as "market entry barriers, effectively stifling diversity and impeding competition." "These rules are even more detrimental to minority broadcasters," the group maintained, "who typically own stations with inferior technical parameters and have a difficult time reaching their intended audience because the stations are located far from the centers of the urban markets they generally serve."

"The Commission's outdated radio rules, coupled with the industry's economic crisis, only serve to compound the grim reality of the consistent market entry barriers that challenge minority entrepreneurs," the filing conclued. "Minority broadcast ownership does not remotely reflect the representation of minorities overall in the population. Despite the fact that minorities comprise over one-third of the population in the United States, minorities own a mere 7.7 percent of full-power commercial facilites."