[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 10, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1169-E1170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   INTRODUCTION OF THE LOCAL TELEVISION COMPETITION AND DIVERSITY ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CLIFF STEARNS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 10, 1997

  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer a substantive piece 
of legislation regarding the duopoly rules of broadcast ownership under 
the current law.
  In the historic Telecommunications Act that was introduced in 1995, 
the Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives included 
provisions in its version of the act that would have allowed ownership 
of two broadcast stations in a local market. The members of the House 
Commerce Committee who supported duopoly reform believed that allowing 
one person or entity to own two such stations would not have a negative 
effect on local communities, but would in fact promote programming 
diversity and would strengthen local broadcast owners who could not 
operate their businesses in a way that provided the best programming 
services to their local communities.
  Unfortunately, our efforts were not agreed to by our Senate 
colleagues and the duopoly provisions were not a part of the final 
conference report to the Telecommunications Act, which was signed into 
law by President Clinton in 1996.
  In order to rectify this situation, I have introduced this 
legislation to provide for real duopoly reform. The heart of the 
legislation would allow a person or company to own two stations in a 
local market, but one would have to be a UHF station. Therefore, such 
an entity could own two UHF stations or a VHF-UHF combination. 
Notwithstanding, however, the FCC still would have an override of that 
duopoly condition if they significantly harm diversity in their 
opinion.
  This bill also would allow the FCC, under unusual and compelling 
circumstance, to allow a person or company to own two VHF stations. 
Relaxation of the duopoly rule will mean more local programming in the 
market, more news, more sports, and more children's programming. This 
change is necessary to ensure that free, over-the-air television 
continues in a multichannel world.
  The communications marketplace today is vastly different than when 
the television local ownership rule was last examined in 1964. Since 
that time, there has been a substantial increase in the number of 
broadcast television stations and phenomenal growth in other video 
technology and outlets, including cable, DBS, wireless cable, and 
Internet broadcast.

[[Page E1170]]

There are now more voices in every market, and more competition for 
viewers and advertising dollars with these additional players. The 
competition for advertising dollars has been particularly formidable as 
cable systems increasingly cluster themselves over entire local 
markets, thus enabling them to offer advertisers the same buy as local 
broadcasters.
  The sheer abundance of media outlets now available to consumers 
ensures that a relaxation of the duopoly rule to permit UHF-UHF and 
UHF-VHF combinations poses no threat to diversity and competition. 
Indeed, a revision of the duopoly rule will help preserve diversity and 
competition in local broadcasting markets.
  Whether it is providing critical emergency information, as in the 
case of the recent North Dakota floods, or covering local sports teams, 
or reporting the local news, local stations serve a unique and vital 
role in their communities, all at no cost to the viewing public. But 
local programming is very expensive to produce. Duopoly rule revision 
will give stations flexibility to pool resources and provide more 
quality programs for their communities. At the same time, wireless 
broadcasters and Internet providers will still be competing with these 
broadcasters for consumers.
  I strongly believe that this is good legislation, especially in light 
of the dramatic ownership changes already taking place in the field of 
telecommunications. Considering the Bell Atlantic-NYNEX merger, the 
MCI-BT announced merger, and the proposed AT&T-SBC merger, we are 
seeing clear consolidation in telephony. There is also multichannel 
ownership in cable services and cross-cable services, such as Viacom 
owning MTV, Nickelodeon, and other stations, as well as ABC owning 80 
percent of ESPN.
  The banning of ownership of two local broadcast stations is a glaring 
deficiency and unfair result of the Telecommunications Act. The 
multiple current instances in the industry of Local Marketing 
Agreements [LMA's], which allows two local broadcast stations to 
combine efforts and financial relationships in order to improve their 
stations' programming ability, reflect that such duopoly ownership 
could actually promote diversity in programming, as well as saving 
numerous local stations from bankruptcy enhancing the limited financial 
resources of many stations.
  I am proud to sponsor this legislation and I look forward to the 
Federal Communications Commission supporting my legislation on duopoly 
reform through its forthcoming rulemaking on this issue.

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