December 17, 2025
MB Docket No. 22-459
***note: this Comment was filed timely but fails to appear on the FCC website.
COMMENTS OF SUE WILSON, MEDIA ACTION CENTER
I. Local Broadcasting Must Remain Local ……………………………………. 2
II. Studies are Necessary. But How? ………………………………………………. 3
III. The Supreme Court and Data …………………………………………………. 5
MB Docket No. 22-459
***note: this Comment was filed timely but fails to appear on the FCC website.
I. Local Broadcasting Must Remain Local
In this Quadrennial Review, the Commission “… currently seeks comment on the policy goals of competition, localism, and viewpoint diversity and whether there are new ways to think about or define these goals and how best to balance them.”
Let us begin by remembering that all broadcasters are licensed to serve our local communities. Providing national news and entertainment is the role of the networks, not local licensed affiliates. Local TV and Radio stations should always put their local communities first, and this Comment will focus on that priority.
As to the question of “viewpoint diversity”, opinions are not really the purview of TV stations (except for balancing viewpoints in local News production.) National Talk Radio dominates
local stations everywhere and skews toward Conservative views.1 There has been very little local Talk Radio produced in decades, and this should be something the Commission looks into when considering “viewpoint diversity.”
In terms of the policy goal of “localism”, the Commission here has asked response to questions about the need for licensees to air national media. The simple answer is local licensees have no
such responsibilities. The Networks ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC all provide national news programming to their affiliates. (FOX offers local affiliates national news stories which may be used in local newscasts at the discretion of its local news producers.)
Due to technological advances, it is very easy today to find national news at our fingertips. Beyond national broadcast network news programs, Cable news, Associated Press, newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, large scale bloggers and others all offer plentiful reports about national and international events.
Meanwhile, too many local areas are turning into news deserts as local newspapers are folding.2 Again, all broadcasters are licensed to serve our local communities, so providing local news content should be the top priority of us all as we continue through this Comment period.
The Commission also asks about “…the importance of broadcast media for public safety purposes during times of emergency…” …“iHeart points out that AM radio broadcasters play an important role in disseminating national emergency announcements. Along these lines, should we consider
the continued existence of a nationwide broadcast infrastructure, and its importance for national security purposes, as a policy goal?”
1 https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-structural-imbalance-of-political-talk-radio/
2 https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/news/2024/medill-report-shows-local-news-deserts-expanding.html
3 https://www.kcra.com/article/timeline-look-back-northern-californias-disastrous-flooding-
1997/386140103
Luckily, we as a nation have not experienced such a need since 9/11. But even then we all watched reports emanating from the affected areas of New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. Those reports emanated from local areas but were covered by nationally affiliated journalists. In essence, outside of Washington DC political and judicial stories, there really is no such thing as national news reporting.
Local licensees affiliated with national networks already serve the public interest in national reporting. A national emergency network is already in place. Even local Radio broadcasters disseminating national emergency announcements would obtain that information from national sources, unless the emergency occurred in their own backyards.
So we ask the Commission to simply drop the idea of national reporting on the local level.Instead, broadcasters licensed to serve our local communities need to focus their reporting resources on local news reporting. Only local reporters can provide live coverage of hurricanes, flooding, blizzards, forest fires and the like. Radio’s technology is simple compared to Television; theoretically, emergency broadcasts could be best served by robust local radio teams.
Yet in our local Sacramento media market we have found TV does a better job.
The last time our local community of Sacramento experienced a widespread disaster was in January 1997 when heavy rains and levee failures fostered widespread flooding.3 iHeart Radio (then Clear Channel) did a very good job Monday through Friday during its daypart hours. In the evening and weekends, they had little to no news about our local emergency. The community
largely turned to TV, which did a better job. KCRA-TV provided us 24 hour emergency newsreporting. (Talk about “serving the public interest.” It is small wonder that viewers rewardKCRA even with the highest ratings in our area.)
II. Studies are Necessary. But How?
We are delighted the Commission is asking for specific examples of local need and seeks comment on “how to measure localism, viewpoint diversity, and competition.”
As discussed earlier, local news production is the top priority for virtually every town and city across the United States. So let us use that as the metric for “local need.”
Let us begin with what can happen if one broadcast company may license up to four stations in a given Designated Market Area (DMA.) MAC has identified and written about a potential problem with this approach in earlier Comments to the Commission and in an Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court.4 We have identified a pattern where one broadcaster licensing or controlling three to four stations in a given DMA is reproducing the exact same news stories on all their 4
stations.
4 https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-
1231/166343/20210114155632239_Sue%20Wilson%20Main%20Document%20E%20FILE%20
update.pdf
We have provided evidence obtained online showing stations duplicating the same news stories on their multiple stations' websites from huge groups to small. However, the question is whether what stations report online accurately represents what stations are doing over our air.
So how exactly do we measure that? The problem is such data is difficult to mine. There is no simple method of acquiring information about programming in hundreds of local stations in more than 200 distinct markets.
We have spoken with many academics who believe they can conduct this research online. MAC disagrees, but is open to be proven wrong. We believe that to be of any value, local data must be collected on a local DMA by local DMA station by station basis. This is no simple task.
In order to determine how well station groups are – or are not – serving local need, we must physically look at a station group’s news reporting over a 24 hour time period to determine if they are producing diverse products of genuine value to the communities they serve, or whether they are just taking up spectrum better allocated to another operator.
MAC has been testing an approach. We selected a mid-size TV market and recorded every news program produced by a single licensee for its three separate stations over a 24 hour period on a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for further analysis. Once recorded, the process of analysis is relatively simple, but requires someone with training in news production to understand the
various types of stories they are witnessing so they may properly document the results.
As we analyzed news program after news program, we documented how many stories were exactly the same across the three stations, how many were changed slightly, how many were new. We compared the difference between the noon news on one channel and the 5 o’clock news on another and more. (This was a licensee which was clearly using economies of scale to produce a volume of local news within their DMAs.)
We do not have a large enough sample to release at this time, but the results were surprising. Certainly many of the stories were exactly the same from one station to another. But the volume of news production in this test was so large that fresh stories did appear, and the quality of the reporting was very good with evenly balanced viewpoints. They also had live weather reports on
all programs excepting the overnight hours.
What we witnessed was a station group proving that they could run three different stations in a market and still serve the local need of the public. (There is also another dominant station in the same market which provides competition in local news.)
But is that the case everywhere? We doubt it. And bad actors need to be called out. The only way to know is to collect the data.
So Media Action Center is asking all interested parties, from broadcasters to academics to fellow
public interest groups to the Commission itself to join us in thinking how such data could be
obtained. We will present a few ideas, and hope we can all come up with a way. Perhaps someone has a method to look at every news program produced within a particular market without flying in to conduct research in Everytown USA. We hope to engage in discussion with you all in the Reply period.
One idea is to follow the model the Television Academy has used to determine Emmy nominees. They typically request any station which wishes to be considered for a local news Emmy Award to submit an aircheck of its local news program airing on a specified date.
What if, on a rotating basis tied to licensing deadlines, stations would be required to send in a 24 hour day of airchecks of all news programs for a particular date? This would create the foundation for someone (the FCC itself, a public interest group like MAC, an academic study, etc.) to conduct detailed studies without the burden of having to travel to Everytown USA.
III. The Supreme Court and Data
At this point, the Commission is probably thinking that the Supreme Court has already ruled that the FCC does not have to provide its own data research.
Still, it is important to point out SCOTUS itself questioned why there is so little data.
This question came up in 2021 during oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Federal
Communications Commission v. Prometheus Radio Project.
Justice Stephen Breyer to Prometheus Counsel Ruthanne Deutsch:5
(Transcript)
JUSTICE BREYER: Now why in heaven's name did you not, or groups that support you, given the tremendous number of people who I'm happy are interested in this -- why aren't there some studies or something? There are 10,000 law professors and economicsprofessors who look for studies to do. Why isn't there something?
MS. DEUTSCH: Well, there is something on this issue which they ignored, even as theycited one --
JUSTICE BREYER: Okay.
MS. DEUTSCH: The Free Press study.
JUSTICE BREYER: Free Press.
MS. DEUTSCH: Why did they ignore it or?
JUSTICE BREYER: Okay, that's – the free. Is there anything other than that?
MS. DEUTSCH: Yes.
JUSTICE BREYER: What?
MS. DEUTSCH: They have their own study that's titled "Whose Spectrum Is It
Anyway" that was cited in comments in -- in the 2014 further notice of proposed –
JUSTICE BREYER: Okay. Okay, I'll look at those.
5 https://apps.oyez.org/player/#/roberts12/oral_argument_audio/25296
The Supreme Court determined that the Federal Communications Commission had sparse data from which to make determinations, but that statute did not require the agency to delve deeper.6
Wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh,
“In assessing the effects of the rule changes on minority and female ownership, the FCC did not have perfect empirical or statistical data. But that is not unusual in day-to-day agency decision making within the Executive Branch. The APA imposes no general obligation on agencies to conduct or commission their own empirical or statistical studies. And nothing in the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to conduct such studies before exercising its discretion under Section 202(h). In light of the sparse record on minority and female ownership and the FCC’s findings with respect to competition, localism, and viewpoint diversity, the Court cannot say that the agency’s decision to repeal or modify the ownership rules fell outside the zone of reasonableness for purposes of the APA.”
“The APA imposes no general obligation on agencies to conduct or commission their own empirical or statistical studies. And nothing in the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to conduct such studies before exercising its discretion under Section 202(h).”
We note that the Court did not say the FCC and other agencies could not conduct or fund studies, only that it is not so required. Perhaps, given the very high stakes in this proceeding, this may be something the Commission would consider. Perhaps broadcasters themselves could contribute to independent studies. Perhaps Academics will see the importance and prioritize such studies. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
The stakes here are so very high. Once the Commission sets new rules, truly the fate of local broadcasting, of local news, and even of local communities themselves hang in the balance.
Let us all get it right.
Respectfully submitted,
Sue Wilson
Media Action Center
6 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-123
