FCC protects stations' territory

In the U.S. and A., radio and TV stations have territory - much like the Mafia. The average viewer or listener might have a hard time following how this works, but I majored in broadcasting in college, so I've seen how the FCC protects this greed.

The TV industry has something called designated market areas. The entire nation (except barren regions of Alaska) is divided into about 200 DMA's defined by Nielsen Media Research. Like school districts, DMA's do not overlap. For instance, the Cincinnati DMA includes numerous counties in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Even if you can pick up out-of-town stations, you're still in only the Cincinnati DMA.

Indeed, even if you can't pick up a city's stations, you might still be in that city's DMA.

This issue is critical to cable regulation. While the FCC is supposed to enforce must-carry rules that require cable systems to feature every over-the-air station in the area, the FCC flinches when stations complain. Our local cable monopoly does not carry any out-of-town network affiliates - which has kept folks from watching shows preempted by local stations.

The cable system could pull in a satisfactory signal from affiliates from neighboring DMA's. But it doesn't, because local stations would complain about the out-of-town stations invading their territory. And the FCC would side with the local stations.

Since the Reagan era, this has been an issue not just across DMA lines but even within DMA's. The Seattle DMA is so overbound that it covers Bellingham, Washington - 90 miles from Seattle. Seattle stations had such weak reception there that Bellingham had its own CBS affiliate for years.

But the Seattle CBS affiliate cried foul, and got the Bellingham station removed from cable in much of the area - even though it was in the same DMA. "You can't watch the Bellingham station! You're in the Seattle DMA!"

Bellingham was in the Seattle DMA because DMA's are determined by not just over-the-air viewership but also cable. This means Seattle stations were able to put Bellingham in their DMA just by getting on cable there. It's circular reasoning: "Bellingham is in our DMA because we're on cable there. We're on cable there because Bellingham is in our DMA."

The most widely used geographic areas in the radio industry are the metropolitan areas promulgated by Arbitron. These definitions don't include most rural counties, and Arbitron allows a few overlaps, particularly when a suburban county is big enough for its own stations. Radio stations are just as zealous on protecting their territory as TV stations.

Observers have surmised that both Los Angeles and San Francisco lost their affiliates for a popular radio program, because a suburban station already carried the show and wouldn't allow a station in the main market to keep airing it. The program was pulled from the stations in the larger market because Arbitron defined the suburban markets as being included within the larger market.

This seems like a rare instance of a smaller station actually benefiting from such a conflict. But even a small station with a weak signal located in the larger market could not have picked up the show, because its Arbitron area included the suburban market. This would apply even if the station's signal was too weak to reach these suburbs.

Two stations could have no signal overlap at all, yet their territory is so sacred that one station is given "rights" to cable coverage or program affiliations even where you can only pick up the other station.

The FCC has done big broadcasters' bidding for years. Like the powerful broadcasters it serves, the FCC just absolutely, utterly hates it when you pull in a station from another territory. That means that in some rural counties, radio listening is technically illegal.

Bracken County, Kentucky, isn't in an Arbitron metro, but most major Cincinnati radio stations reach the county. But the FCC feels you have no "right" to listen to these stations there, even though Bracken County has no stations of its own.

I'm no fan of Cincinnati radio. But the FCC's aim is to favor interests that have even more money and clout than the outrageously wealthy Cincinnati station owners. So if some powerful right-wing whack-a-doo outfit like Don Wildmon's American Family Association wants to build yet another repeater station, it can. It can construct a repeater in Bracken County on a frequency next to a Cincinnati station, and block that station by bleeding onto its frequency.

This in turn can happen because the FCC refuses to make sure stations use transmitters that don't bleed onto other frequencies.

FCC policies favor powerful interests - regardless of whether there is a territorial dispute. Major corporations or Wildmon-style "ministries" can erect a full-power station and require a high school station or other low-power facility to go off the air to make room for it. The FCC rubber-stamps these applications. Yet at the same time, the FCC lets checkbook clergies and big corporations build translators that keep other stations from being heard in rural areas where they've had good coverage for 30 years.

In fact, this affects not just rural counties, but sizeable cities like Bloomington, Indiana. One regular of a radio forum I read sums it up well. This user said that "the FCC decided years ago that you had no right or reason to be listening to out of market stations. ... if a translator is blocking out Louisville in Bloomington..that's too bad ..."

The real issue though is that new translators by powerful corporations are blocking out Indianapolis stations in Bloomington - stations that previously covered Bloomington well.

FCC policy in recent years has been to rubber-stamp every action like this, just because it's technically allowed. Decades ago, the FCC weighed these acts to see if they served the public interest. Now station applications by powerful broadcasters are approved automatically.

The FCC needs new leadership that doesn't soothe every territorial complaint by a TV station or every unreasonable application for a radio repeater. We have a right to expect Congress to order the FCC to change its policies, but Congress isn't exactly a populist bastion, so we're going to have to take our case elsewhere.