FCC Form 323 Changes Seen as Mixed Bag

The FCC’s long-awaited changes to an ownership form for radio and TV stations (CD April 9 p9) and their investors to fill out offer a mixed bag for industry and public-interest advocates, our survey of both sides found. The version of Form 323 unveiled by the Media Bureau earlier this month ought to make filing information about those who own more than 5 percent of each station or broadcast company easier because Excel spreadsheets can be uploaded to the commission’s Consolidated Database System where the documents will be filed, industry lawyers said. And the document ought to be searchable by keywords, making for an easier job when public interest groups and others want to do research on who owns what, some of those advocates said.

The major drawback to the final version of the form -- unveiled after oft delayed filing deadline that’s now July 8 for commercial stations -- is that broadcaster concern over privacy wasn’t addressed, industry lawyers said. That’s because an FCC Registration Number must be obtained by all filers, and they need to provide their Social Security number to get such a number, they said. Fox Television Stations, NAB and NBC Universal were among those who expressed concerns over holders of attributable broadcast interests having to get an FRN to file the document (CD Nov 20 p7). A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.

"If they had allowed comments from the public, which they really didn’t on this particular aspect, I think there’s a pretty good chance they could have come up with a different system that would not have involved Social Security numbers,” said broadcast lawyer William Fitz of Covington & Burling. Allowing spreadsheets to link to CDBS “really, really helps,” he said. Without that, answering an ownership question in the form could have taken “hundreds of hours to handle for many, many broadcasters,” he said. “We haven’t filed one yet, but it looks like it will help.” For Harry Cole of Fletcher Heald, which also represents radio and TV stations, that feature helps. “Where you have particularly voluminous data that may be repeated from one station to the next,” he said, “this will kind of allow you to batch upload information from a number of data points that you couldn’t do before."

Cole is among those upset that the bureau didn’t address privacy concerns sparked by needing an FRN. “I understand that a number of folks throughout the broadcasting community are concerned about that as well,” he said. “Having to cough up a Social Security number just for the purpose of being able to report that [FRN] on a Form 323 seems not to make any sense at all. It’s obviously an issue we've raised before at the FCC that the commission has seemed entirely to not address at any point.” The agency hasn’t addressed Fletcher Heald’s petition for reconsideration, Cole said.

Use of an FRN is a way to avoid providing a Social Security number in public documents, Director Angela Campbell of Georgetown University’s Center for Public Representation said. “The whole point of the FRN number is that you don’t have to give up your Social Security number. You give it to the FCC in confidence, but no one else can have it, so it seems to me it protects their privacy.” Campbell, among those who sought release of Form 323, isn’t perturbed that the date by which information filed in that document must be current was moved back a month, to Nov. 1, 2009, from the initial form while the filing deadline was delayed about eight months. “The whole idea is to build a database so we can look at changes over time,” she said. “Our main concern was just why is it taking so long, and also we wanted to make sure that it will be searchable and really usable.”

Since the idea behind the form is to have a longitudinal database, using Nov. 1, 2009, as the first point in time won’t affect the usefulness of data in the long-term, three proponents of the form said. “It’s not perfect, but it falls into the category or don’t sweat the small stuff, let’s just get it done,” said Executive Director David Honig of Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. “It will correct itself in a year or two.” Media studies Professor Carolyn Byerly of Howard University, among opponents to Fletcher Heald’s request to stay the form, said the initial data “will be a bit stale.” For subsequent filings, which must be made every other year, “if the data is filed on time, it will be a one-time thing that won’t be experienced again,” she said. “This is a slow, incremental change and at every step industry is dragging its heels, so getting any changes at all is important.”