Virtual Duopolies Under attack

[Peter Parker]

In the past there have been some pretty heated discussions about whether some of the virtual duopolies (eg Baltimore's situation with Sinclair and Cunningham) were really duopololies and perhaps illegal.

No matter what side you have taken you may wnat to read this article that indicated that some review is underway.


http://www.tvnewscheck.com/articles/2010/06/09/daily.2/

 

[Mr Tony]

We went though this a few years ago in Duluth, MN
The CBS affiliate was sold to a "new" company called Malara Broadcasting. I doubt the ink was dry and they turned around and has the NBC affiliate run it completely. Duluth only has the Big4+PBS (they recently added a independent station there) so both Fox & ABC called foul to the FCC

The building has both logos on it (NBC6 & CBS3). NBC had a satellite station in the northern part of the DMA and when they went digital they threw 5 channels on it
NBC in HD
CBS in SD
CW in SD
My in SD
weather network

In Duluth CW is on the CBS subchannel and My is on NBC subchannel

 

[bicker]

The underlying issue stems from this portion of the article:

The agency also adopted a "failed station" policy to allow common ownership of two stations in a small market if it could be demonstrated that one of the stations might go dark without help

So effectively, the objective of creating duopolies is to interfere with natural market forces that would result in shuttering of one of the (presumably relatively few) over-the-air broadcast stations serving a specific market, thereby reducing the programming options available to viewers, and most especially, typically reducing the availability to niche interest programming, such as programming of interest to racial and/or cultural minorities.

Do the math: There is no way to resolve that situation without violating at least one reasonable criterion for an acceptable solution. This is clearly a situation where there is no good answer possible. So we have to choose among all-bad choices, and indeed, I don't see any one of the choices that is better than the others from all significant stakeholders' perspectives.