The FCC has released its latest report on the state of the communications marketplace, which Congress requires it to do every two years.
This is the last such report under the current Democratic majority on the commission. The next will probably look a lot different.
The two sitting Republicans both dissented over how the FCC defines markets it regulates, something broadcasters have been complaining about for years.
Commissioner Brendan Carr, soon to become chairman, wrote: “For instance, instead of providing an accurate assessment of the converged market for communications services, the commission continues to use a decades-old approach that looks at each broadband technology — including mobile, fixed and satellite — as services that compete only in distinct and separate silos. That is not at all a reflection of the dynamics at play in the real world today. … But the good news is that there will soon be an opportunity to correct course.”
Carr also complained that the report “expands its scope into various ‘equity’ considerations, rather than remaining focused on the competitive indicators identified by Congress.” Carr has said that the FCC should not be in the DEI business.
His colleague Nathan Simington wrote, “‘Broadband’ is high-speed internet connectivity, whatever its modality of delivery (and, at this point, we have a few). Similarly, ‘media’ is audio or visual content, whatever its modality of delivery (and, at this point, we have more than a few).”
Generally speaking, the FCC’s treatment of broadcast media as constituting a universe of their own, rather than being part of the broader competitive audio and video marketplace, has been seen as a justification for not easing or removing the remaining broadcast ownership caps. A commission that broadens the definition of the marketplace for broadcasters presumably will be friendlier to deregulating radio and TV ownership further. And one item to be completed under Carr will be the 2022 Quadrennial Media Ownership Review; the remaining ownership rules (the Local Radio Ownership Rule, the Local Television Ownership Rule and the Dual Network Rule) are a focus of that review.
The marketplace report assesses competition in several categories: fixed broadband services; mobile wireless; voice telephone; satellite; video; and audio. Broadcast radio is one of the subsections of the audio category. You can read all 300+ pages of the marketplace report here. (The audio category starts at paragraph 280 on page 179, with the terrestrial radio portion beginning at paragraph 284.)
It makes for interesting reading, though most of the topics discussed in the audio section are familiar to Radio World readers including trends in overall revenue; the relative stability in the number of licensed stations; growth in radio’s online revenue; the growth in other online audio platforms (both on-demand and linear); and the state of satellite radio, podcasting and smart speakers.
Other topics in the lengthy report include broadband adoption; entry conditions in the marketplace; and actions taken by the FCC to close the “digital divide.”
