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And I'm Melissa Block.
The Federal Communications Commission says it wants to make it easier for minorities to own television stations and wants to require broadcasters to air a minimum amount of local programming. But critics of the FCC say it's also doing the opposite: pushing to allow more consolidation and cross-ownership of media companies.
Daniel Kraker from Arizona Public Radio has the latest in our series on the challenges facing the FCC.
DANIEL KRAKER: Ever taken a road trip and heard the same classic rock song on one radio station then another, then another? Well, welcome to KTNN in Window Rock, Arizona.
(Soundbite of KTNN AM radio broadcast)
Mr. ROY KEETO (Disc Jockey, KTNN AM Radio Station): (Navajo spoken) low-income home energies of the program (Navajo spoken)…
KRAKER: KTNN's 50-thousand watt signal is huge but you'd be hard pressed to find a station that's more local. It serves the country's second largest Indian tribe on an enormous and remote reservation that spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. For many of the 200,000 or so Navajos who live here, KTNN is their only source of information.
Mr. KEETO: Some of our people, they live off the highway 15 or 20 miles away, way out there, you know, and some of them don't have electricity or they don't have running water but they do have portable radios.
KRAKER: That's daytime DJ, Roy Keeto. He plays country music but his show includes funeral notices, local rodeo information, even schedules for traditional religious ceremonies and Christian revivals. KTNN also airs local news in both English and Navajo. And news director, Paul Jones broadcast a daily Navajo word of the day segment.
Mr. PAUL JONES (News Director, KTNN AM Radio Station): One of the main reasons why we started that was for our kids, you know? A lot of our kids do not understand Navajo language. They were raised in what we call it the white man's world.
KRAKER: KTNN is a Navajo owned commercial AM station that makes a profit and serves its specific community, which is exactly the vision of Federal Communications Commission had for broadcasters when it first started granting licenses in 1934. Radio and later TV stations were given free access to the public airwaves. In exchange, they were expected to provide a local public service to the communities where they were licensed.
Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says that now that's changed and his agency is partly to blame.
Mr. MICHAEL COPPS (Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission): Through all of this deregulation coupled with a great tsunami of media consolidation that we've had on the last 15 years or so, lots of that localism has disappeared.
KRAKER: Copps and the other four commissioners, Democrats and Republicans try to address that at the end of last year through new rules designed to help what's known as Low Power FM.
(Soundbite of music)
KRIM is a 100-watt station in Payson, a small town nestled in the pine-covered mountain, an hour north of Phoenix. Steve Bingham launched KRIM eight years ago when there was only one radio station in town.
Mr. STEVE BINGHAM (General Manager, KRIM-FM Radio Station): We give them local news. We give them weather. We give them local musicians. This is what radio used to be 50 years ago. We just turned the clock back.
(Soundbite of KRIM-FM radio broadcast)
Unidentified Woman: At the Buffalo Bar, Cody Gibson performs on Friday and Saturday…
KRAKER: KRIM with the first Low Power FM station in Arizona. The FCC started licensing LPFMs a decade ago as a non-commercial very local service. There are now about 800 LPFMs nationwide. Most only reach a radius of about four miles and most are located in rural areas. Concerns over interference led a number of national broadcasters including NPR to lobby against relaxed restrictions on LPFM. Steve Bingham, a retired teacher and ham radio operator built KRIM with $30,000 out of his own pocket. Now, it's the number one station in the region.
Mr. BINGHAM: It's pretty amazing because up here, you can listen to 20 other stations including the three or four top radio stations down in the valley.
KRAKER: So, how does a rinky-dink station compete with some of the biggest broadcasters in Phoenix? It mixes local issues and music with a blend of national indies and classic rock. Bingham says there's a huge need for LPFM right now.
Mr. BINGHAM: I was looking at the ratings for the greater metropolitan Phoenix area. Number one station was Clear Channel, number three was Clear Channel, number four was Clear Channel, number five was Clear Channel. How much diversity can you get when one company owns - they own 11 stations down there?
KRAKER: The FCC began looking into such criticisms five years ago. This past December at the same time the commission voted to increase support for LPFM, the commission also voted to require all commercial stations to air a certain amount of local programming. It was something of a reversal of the deregulation of the past quarter century and that concerns Dennis Wharton with the National Association of Broadcasters.
Mr. DENNIS WHARTON (Executive Vice President, National Association of Broadcasters): The dilemma here for the FCC is them getting into dictating program content because they need to start bumping up against First Amendment issues.
KRAKER: The FCC's new rules are intended to make broadcasters prove they're serving their local communities. Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps says that's the way it used to be when licenses expired every three years. Now, they're good for eight years and Copps says only require a postcard for renewal.
Mr. COPPS: If we're going to have that localism, if we're going to have diversity, we're going to have to have licensing procedures; lots of broadcasters know that somebody's watching.
Mr. MARCO FLORES (News Director, Univision Channel 33, Phoenix): This (unintelligible) the production room.
(Soundbite of creaking door)
Mr. FLORES: I need to put some oil on that.
KRAKER: Marco Flores is news director at the Univision Channel 33 in Phoenix. He oversees a small team that produces one hour of local TV news a day. He compares that to about five hours of his English language competitors. Still Univision's five o'clock news has ranked number one in the city for the past five years.
Mr. FLORES: We're not a news breaking station. What we are is a community service station. And we're number one because we have a good sense of what a community needs.
KRAKER: Here's how that affects his decision making.
Mr. FLORES: There could be a (unintelligible) and Congress might be considering, you know, an immigration reform. So the question is what story do I open with? The 10-car pileup that is affecting hundreds of people that are in the freeway versus you know 20, 30, 40, 50,000 people who are waiting to hear what's going on with immigration.
KRAKER: Well, Univision 33's news staff is entirely Latino, Univision's owners are not. The network was sold to a private equity firm last year. In fact, there are no minority-owned television stations in Phoenix, the nation's second fastest growing Hispanic market. According to the public interest group, Free Press, minorities own only about 3 percent of the nation's TV stations and only about 7 percent of the radio stations. Craig Aaron is the group's communications director.
Mr. CRAIG AARON (Communications Director, Univision): It's a direct result of failed FCC policies because what the FCC has done time and again is encouraged consolidation and there's nothing worse from minority ownership than increasing consolidation.
KRAKER: Minority-owned stations are generally in the weakest financial positions in their markets and thus the most ripe for buyouts. Marco Flores at the Univision Station in Phoenix says new management hasn't changed at all what he does but Jonathan Higuera president of the Arizona Latino Media Association says it has changed the other major Spanish language TV station in town. Two years ago Telemundo was bought out by NBC which cut most of the local news staff instead providing a regional news cast out of Houston.
Mr. JONATHAN HIGUERA (President, Arizona Latino Media Association): That's an example of when you have corporate ownership, how they can make a decision at a corporate level, impact your local community and sometimes there's not a lot of recourse.
KRAKER: Higuera stresses that just because the station is owned by a person of color that won't necessarily make it better suited to serve its community. But if the experience at Navajo-owned KTNN and elsewhere seems to show, local ownership and minority ownership may well increase the odds.
For NPR News, I'm Daniel Kraker.
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