The FCC has released its fourth biennial report on broadcast station ownership, based on information from 2017, and the numbers aren't promising for either women or minorities, though the data is now at least a couple of years old. 

The information was collected from full power commercial TVs, Class A TVs, low-power. 

It is the first such report to include information on the diversity of noncommercial station ownership. 

According to the figures, women hold majority voting interests in only 73 full-power commercial TV stations, or 5.3% of the total 1,368. That is compared with 102 (7.4%) of  1,385 full powers according to the 2015 report. The figures were better for noncoms, at least percentage wise, where women held majority voting interests in 53 of a total 391, or 13.6%. 

Hispanics/Latinos owned 58 commercial full-power TVs (4.2%) as of 2017, down from 62 (4.5%) in 2015. Racial minorities collectively owned 26 commercial full-power TV's, or only 1.9% of the total, down from 36 (2.6%) in 2015. The numbers were even lower for noncoms, with Hispanics/Latinos holding the majority of voting interests in only five of the 391 stations, or (1.3%) of 391 stations, and racial minorities owning only 4 of 391, or 1%. 

LPTVs, and AM and FM radio stations. It represents "attributable ownership interests for commercial and noncommercial stations, as reported by licensees, as of October 1, 2017." 

The report is essentially a biennial snapshot of the race, ethnicity and gender of those who own or control broadcast properties. 

Democratic commissioner Geoffrey Starks was glad the numbers were out, but unhappy with the story they told, and with the age of the data, which he called an "unacceptable lag."  

"To effectively address the lack of media ownership diversity, we cannot use stale data and must get better at assessing the extent of the problem in a timely manner." 

"Regarding the numbers," he said, "it is striking—but not surprising—that no minority group is better off in owning more full power commercial broadcast stations than they did in 2015." 

One African American media mogul, however, is trying to single handedly boost broadcast diversity for the next report. 

Byron Allen this week closed on an 11-TV station purchase, bringing his total to 15 TVs, with a promise to spend billions to boost that total big time. 

WASHINGTON — As Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler prepares to circulate the agency’s long-anticipated quadrennial ownership rule review, the National Association of Broadcasters is asking it to give broadcasters more regulatory room to be competitive, warning that the current spectrum auction and its impact on TV stations should not affect that effort.

The FCC is now six years overdue on its 2010 review and two years overdue on its 2014 review, which have been rolled up into one and scheduled for circulation by the end of this month, likely by sometime next week.

In an ex parte filing with the commission, the NAB asks the FCC to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast crossownership rules, "the last remnant of the radio-television cross-ownership rule,” eliminate the eight-voices test for local ownership — no duopolies if it leaves fewer than eight independent voices in a market — and reform the top-four restriction that prevents a duopoly involving two of the four top-rated stations in a market.

The NAB also said that the commission should not use the auction, which could extend through the last quarter of the year, as an excuse not to take action.

“[T]he recently commenced TV spectrum incentive auction provides no basis for the commission to refrain from concluding its 2010 and 2014 quadrennial reviews in the time frame noted by the Third Circuit,” NAB executives said in a letter dated June 21.

“Both Congress and the commission have recognized that an incentive auction inevitably would result in a decrease in the number of TV station licensees,” the letter said. “Indeed, that is the stated purpose of the auction — to persuade broadcasters ‘to relinquish some or all of their spectrum usage rights’ and to ‘clear the highest possible amount of spectrum for broadband.’

"Because Congress and the commission already have decided that reducing the number of TV stations will serve the public interest, the Commission cannot properly use that public interest judgment as a basis to further delay fulfilling its obligations [to modernize] its ownership rules to reflect today’s marketplace," the agency continued.

Tom Wheeler has not shown any proclivity toward major broadcast deregulation, instead having in March 2014 tightened local ownership rules to count most joint sales agreements as ownership, though a federal court recently vacated that tightening because the FCC had taken the action before the quadrennial review.

The NAB said that court decision, as well as the competitive and technological changes in the marketplace, are reasons why the FCC should remove what it has long said are vestiges of another century — make that millennium — when there was no cable, satellite, telco or online competition.

But following the court ruling, the chairman's office quickly indicated that the JSA tightening could return as part of the quadrennial review item.