The FCC announced yesterday that they will be returning back to Tampa next month, where "cross-ownership" will be the theme. The government agency is apparently re-exploring newspaper-broadcast and TV-radio cross-ownership rules.
The event will be held at the Marshall Center on the USF campus from 3 p.m. to 7:30, and according to the FCC will:
explore any benefits and harms of newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership and the impact these
combinations have on competition and diversity in the media marketplace.
The one-panel forum will discuss, among other issues:
How newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership affects competition in the local
media marketplace;
To what extent, if any, cross-ownership affects the production of news and public
affairs content; and
Whether cross-owned combinations impact the quantity, quality, diversity, and
responsiveness of local news and public affairs programming and if so, how.
Panelists will include representatives from organizations with newspaper-television and
newspaper-radio combinations, and media advocacy groups. Public participation in the
workshop is encouraged.
You may remember a similar workshop was held in Tampa back in 2007 at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Overnight a former colleague of mine who now works for the Prometheus Radio Project informed me about the event, where she will be organizing low power radio advocates and media activists to participate.
The Tampa Bay area is a target rich environment for such a topic. The Tampa Tribune of course works under the same parent as WFLA News Channel 8, which is Media General.
The St. Petersburg Times, meanwhile, is owned by a non-profit in the Poynter Institute. Both papers have been discussed and described as possible models for the future of the struggling newspaper business.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2010.