FCC seeks feedback on Portland-area broadcasters

PORTLAND – Members of the public will have a rare opportunity this week to offer feedback to the Federal Communications Commission on how Portland-area broadcasters are fulfilling their public service responsibilities.

The hearing Thursday at Portland High School comes at a time when more local media are concentrated in fewer hands. In Portland, all of the commercial TV stations and most of the radio stations are owned by out-of-state corporations.

“We want to see what people in Portland and the surrounding communities think about how the local media is handling issues of local content,” said FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who will attend the hearing. “I want to know how the out-of-state ownership is affecting people. I’m not prejudging it, but I am concerned.”

Sen. Olympia Snowe, an advocate for a strong government role in policing the airwaves, had pushed to have Portland selected as one of six cities in which the full commission is holding a hearing.

“I am concerned about the quality of news and information programming in areas like Portland, or anywhere else in our nation that lacks local media ownership,” she said.

Snowe said she planned to monitor future changes to ownership rules to ensure enforcement of local content and diversity of viewpoints on media outlets, regardless of where their owners live.

“The print and broadcast media serve a critical function by exposing Americans to different ways of thinking, and independence in ownership is the essence of that function,” Snowe said.

The trend toward out-of-state ownership picked up after some rules governing station ownership were relaxed in 1996. In 1998, WCSH Channel 6 was bought by Virginia-based Gannett and WGME Channel 13 was bought by Sinclair Broadcast Group in Baltimore. In 2004, WMTW was purchased by Hearst-Argyle, based in New York.