This is Inner City …

“[T]he market shapes programming to a tremendous extent. Members of minority groups who own licenses might be thought, like other owners, to seek to broadcast programs that will attract and retain audiences, rather than programs that reflect the owner’s tastes and preferences.”  -  From Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s Dissenting Opinion in Metro Broadcasting Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990) 

“Don’t take away the music.  It’s the only thing I’ve got.  It’s my piece of the rock.” - From the lyrics of Don’t Take Away the Music by Tavares.

When the walls started shaking at the Joint Center’s offices during Tuesday’s earthquake, I was faced with one question: leave the building or stay inside?  Similarly, the seismic transformation of the broadcasting industry brought on by mobile devices, personal computers, and digital video recorders has presented new problems for broadcasters.  But Black-owned radio stations targeting African-American audiences are faced with their own fight or flight question:  Can they stay profitable by offering black-only programming?  What is the tipping point at which diversifying their programming will begin to alienate their listener base?

Earlier this week, Inner City Media Corporation’s creditors filed an involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition against it. Inner City Media Corporation is the holding company of Inner City Broadcasting, one of the nation’s leading black-owned broadcasters and owner of WBLS-FM/WLIB-AM in New York City.  Inner City’s creditors claim that it owes some $254 million.

Inner City Broadcasting is rooted in the civil rights movement.  The late Percy Sutton, former attorney to Malcolm X and a former Manhattan Borough President; and Clarence Jones, former publisher of The New York Amsterdam News, one of the oldest black-owned newspapers in the United States, founded the company in 1970.  WBLS has been home to legendary black radio personalities like Hal Jackson, Frankie Crocker, Wendy Williams and DJ Red Alert.  WLIB has changed formats many times over the years, but it too has featured notable personalities including Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow; and Rev. Al Sharpton.  Inner City owns 15 other stations in San Francisco, CA, Columbia, SC, and Jackson, MS.

Inner City’s failure to repay its debt could be attributed to any number of causes, such as poor financial management.   But saying that poor financial management is the sole culprit, and leaving it there, does little to address the issue of why Inner City’s stations have failed to generate enough revenue to pay the bills. 

Let’s take WBLS as an example.

WBLS’ Glass Ceiling

WBLS has hit a glass ceiling.  Barring a complete revamping of its format to include more mainstream content, it appears that WBLS has attained the highest ranking possible with an urban adult contemporary (Urban AC) format in New York.  According to Arbitron, the Urban AC format is the most popular format among African-Americans.  It features music by artists such as Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly, Earth, Wind & Fire Marvin Gaye, R. Kelly, Alicia Keys, Eric Benet, Ne-Yo and Usher.  The “average quarter hour” (AQH) rating of a radio station is the average percentage of a population being measured listening to a radio station for at least five minutes during a 15-minute period.  With a 3.6% AQH overall rating, WBLS is the number one station in New York targeting a predominantly black audience.  It also ranks #8 among all radio stations in the New York metro area.  WLIB, WBLS’ sister station, ranks 34^th, with a .4 AQH rating. 

WBLS’ closest competitor, Emmis Communications’ WRKS-FM (98.7 Kiss FM)—the only other Urban AC station in the market—is ranked at a distant #16 overall.  But Kiss is half of Emmis’ combo which includes WQHT-FM (Hot 97), an urban station that skews toward the 18-34 demographic with hip-hop and r&b artists.  Hot 97 posted a 3.3% AQH rating in July, placing it at #12 in the overall rankings.  But with the ratings of Kiss and Hot 97 combined, Emmis is actually pulling a 6.2% AQH overall rating, compared to a 4.0 combined rating for Inner City’s WBLS/WLIB combo.

Further, Inner City has been hauled into bankruptcy, while its publically traded counterpart is carrying a similar long-term debt load without repercussions.  The $254 million that Inner City owes to Yucaipa Cos. and others does not appear to be that unusual.  Not taking into account other liabilities, Inner City’s debt-per-station based on the $254 million alone is $14.9 million. At the end of 2Q’11, Emmis held long term debt obligations of $327.2 million.  Spread across Emmis’ 22-station portfolio, its debt-per-station is $14.8 million, just $100,000 shy of the amount of Inner City’s obligation.

Should WBLS Change Formats to Increase Inner City’s Revenue?

Radio stations change formats all the time.  If a particular format is not working, most station owners are generally not averse to abruptly switching formats.  For example, the radio station at 101.9 FM in the New York Metro area, also owned by Emmis, has changed formats four times over the past seven years.  In 2004, the station switched from Smooth Jazz (Kenny G, Sade, Yellowjackets, Anita Baker) to an electronic/ambient music format (Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation).  It switched back to Smooth Jazz in 2005 and, in 2008, flipped to Rock (Kings of Leon, Pearl Jam, Black Crowes, Blink 182).  Finally, on August 12^th of this year, the station changed formats yet again, switching to an all-News format.

Inner City is no stranger to programming formats targeting non-African-American audiences.  Among Inner City’s 15 other stations, only 6 target African-Americans specifically.  Inner City’s station portfolio also includes progressive talk, rock, classic rock (Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, the Yardbirds), oldies (Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, The Supremes, The Four Seasons, and Sam Cooke), Chinese-language, Vietnamese-language, and two sports talk, ESPN Radio affiliates.

But what is often a business-as-usual decision to change formats carries an additional layer of complexity for black-oriented stations.  As in the case of WBLS, radio stations targeting a predominantly African-American audience are often intimately tied to the very heritage of the communities they serve.  In our communities, having the ability to listen to black music, on radio stations owned by people who look like us, with credible air personalities we can relate to, is often about much more than entertainment.  In an era of high unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, disproportionate incarceration rates, and widening achievement gaps in education, listening to black-oriented radio has a cathartic effect.

WBLS could change formats, but why should it?  Arbitron reports a .5 percent increase in the number of African-Americans who listen to Adult Contemporary radio stations (Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston, Chicago, and Christopher Cross) since Fall of 2009.  It also reports an increase in the number of Blacks who listen to Pop Contemporary Hits (Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Pink, Black Eyed Peas).  But this is far from a death-knell for black radio.  Radio stations targeting mainstream audiences have diversified their playlists, but black-oriented radio stations have not. 

Those African-Americans that listen to both black-oriented stations and mainstream stations are signaling a desire for more diverse content.  Their behavior indicates an impulse to seek out contexts that communicate—as Pepper Miller of the Hunter-Miller group describes it—“a universal situation … living parallel to mainstream” rather than isolated in a silo with no mass appeal relevance.  This does not require black-oriented stations to change formats completely.  But what it does require is learning a lot more about black listeners who are less loyal to Urban AC formats, and addressing some of their programming needs.  If Inner City doesn’t do it, someone else will, and it is starting to look more and more like that may very well be the scenario. 

Blacks and Latinos in “Mad Men”: Art or Artifice?

I have a thing for New York City nostalgia.  That is why I was excited to learn a couple of weeks ago that Netflix began streaming all four seasons of Mad Men, which I still had not seen.  I had heard testimonials of its keen story line, exquisite production, and distinguished cast.  I could not wait to see what the hoopla was about.  After watching just one episode, now I know.

The opening scene of the first episode is a bar filled with executives laughing, drinking and smoking during happy hour.  Ever the creative genius, the show’s protagonist, ad man Don Draper, is doodling something on his beverage napkin.  Just then, Sam the bartender appears with Draper’s drink.  Sam is African-American and in his 60s.  Sam looks tired, like he is working a double shift for the third time this week.  A conversation ensues between Draper and Sam and the head bartender, who is white, immediately interrupts them to ask Draper if Sam is “bothering” him.  Draper waves off the head bartender and, ostensibly trying to determine how to get people like Sam to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes—one of Draper’s clients—he begins to quiz Sam on why he is loyal to Old Gold, a competing brand.

Ah, the good old days … But, for whom? 

I am usually skeptical about period pieces featuring an all-White cast.  I usually assume the subtext is that things were much better the way they used to be, when people of color were subjugated by enforced discrimination—either through Jim Crow laws, or by things like refusing to hire and promote anyone in New York City’s storied corridors of industry, unless they lived in its surrounding suburbs.  Provided that you lived in places like Ossining, NY, or at least summered in the Hamptons growing up, you were part of the “in” crowd—it just made the day go by faster when you had people around who could relate to the old neighborhood. 

I have not seen a demographic breakdown of Mad Men’s audience—this information is usually proprietary and limited to television networks with millions to spend on ratings service subscriptions.  Still, there is no question that Mad Men is very popular, at least within the television industry itself.  According to the show’s website, Mad Men, which will enter its fifth season of production next year, has been nominated for 19 Emmy Awards this year alone.  It has already won thirteen Emmys and four Golden Globes.

Normally, television shows do not achieve that kind of notoriety unless they are successful in reaching the audience advertisers value most—consumers with disposable income.  That category excluded people beset by inequality in 1960, and it continues to exclude people beset by inequality today, unless something cheap is for sale that dulls the senses, like cigarettes. 

But the show’s earnings have been less than impressive by industry standards, as mainstream advertisers have been slow to take to the show, in its broadcast form, when it airs on AMC.  Mad Men’s current advertisers are often luxury brands, such as BMW, but the show only generated $1.98 million in advertising revenues in 2009—the latest year for which numbers are available. 

Some have argued that Mad Men’s subpar financial performance can be attributed to the increased popularity of time-shifted entertainment and on-line television viewing.  These are reasonable conclusions for expanding Mad Men to new platforms, like Netflix.  But from a broader perspective, it is difficult to conclude that these trends do not signal America’s changing demographics and the state of the economy.  Given America’s increasing racial and ethnic diversity, it is possible that more Americans are skeptical, before giving Mad Men a chance, concluding that it is yet another example of the past being repackaged to perpetuate old value systems.  They avoid what they perceive to be revisionist interpretations of the past.  But it could also be another indicator that America’s growing inequality has resulted in a scenario where there are simply too few viewers with disposable income left.  And that is truly something to be mad about. 

What Happens When You Offend the Wrong People

It took a hacking scandal across the pond for the U.S. government to investigate News Corporation—a company that has repeatedly skirted past U.S. media ownership rules and unapologetically fueled hatred against every person of color under the sun. 

The News Corporation hacking scandal comes on the heels of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ July 7^th decision in Prometheus Project v. FCC (Prometheus II).   In that case, the court chastised the Federal Communications Commission for relaxing its newspaper/broadcast cross ownership (NOBCO) rule before the Commission provided adequate notice to the public.  The NOBCO rule is a ban against owning a newspaper and either a tv or radio station in the same market.  The court also vacated an “eligible entities” framework for promoting minority and female media ownership, reasoning that the “eligible entities” definition was too vague.  The decision left intact the Commission’s tv/radio cross-ownership rules as well as its rules governing local competition between television and radio stations.  But it is not as though Rupert Murdoch & Co. was ever really subject to these, or any, media ownership rules. 

The FCC has allowed Rupert Murdoch to colonize the nation’s broadcast airwaves which has resulted in an apartheid of ideas hiding behind popular, innocuous tv shows such as American Idol.  Back in 1993, the FCC granted News Corporation a waiver of the NBCO rule because it thought that Rupert Murdoch was the only person on earth who could save the ailing New York Post.  In 1995, the Commission granted Rupert Murdoch, who is Australian, a waiver of the general policy against foreign ownership because it felt that Murdoch’s ownership of stations in the United States would promote the public interest.   

Rupert Murdoch promotes the public interest?

While the number of stations owned by people of color cannot be established—since the FCC has done little to generate data on ownership of broadcast stations by people of color—the latest research pins the number of broadcast stations owned by people of color at around 3%, even though the population of Americans reporting that they are a race other than “white alone” stands at nearly 45%.  Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch leveraged the capital he generated as a result of the initial waivers he got for his broadcast stations to launch Fox News.  But rather than upholding notions of basic journalistic integrity—such as objectivity—Fox News has served as an instrument of one political ideology and of hate groups that are once again flourishing throughout the country. 

Back in May, New York Magazine columnist Gabriel Sherman published an article outlining the intricate web weaved by Fox News head Roger Ailes, and people within the Republican establishment, to operate Fox News as an instrument of the GOP.  Is it in the public interest for broadcast journalists to be so vehemently in favor of a single political party?   

For several years, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) has asked the Federal Communications Commission and other federal agencies to investigate links between hate speech and hate crime, but the federal government has sat on its hands.  NHMC has painstakingly kept a running list of hate speech and hate crimes occurring in the United States.  In one example, a suspect who got into a 15-minute shoot out with California Highway patrol, said that it was Glenn Beck and right-wing internet conspiracist and frequent Fox News commentator Alex Jones, who inspired him to pursue his “revolution.” 

Which public interest are we talking about here?  

In November of 2008, in response to the still-pending Prometheus II case, Austin Schlick, General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote to the court that the FCC was “already working hard to reexamine” several media ownership rules.  This is hard to believe, since Schlick wrote his letter just three months after the FCC released the first of 30 National Broadband Plan public notices, and just shy of a month after it announced the commencement of what was fated to become a fourteen-month-long open internet proceeding.  Let’s face it: The FCC was not working hard on much of anything at the end of 2008 other than the national broadband plan and net neutrality.  

The FBI has launched an investigation into News Corp, however.  The law enforcement agency plans to look into whether News Corp hacked into the cell phones of 9/11 victims.  Whether that investigation will be expanded to examine ties between News Corporation officials and hate crime offenders remains to be seen.  If history is any guide, it will not. 

Would the FBI investigation have been initiated were it not for the highly publicized hacking scandal in the U.K.?  As in the media’s national obsession with white children who are harmed, while children of color perish unknown beyond their local communities, would the hacking scandal have reached such a fever pitch if Milly Dowler had been black?

NBCU to Handle NHL Ad Sales

NHL will never have to worry that Comcast will pull NBC’s signal during a retransmission consent impasse—Comcast owns the broadcast network and NBCU has some skin in the game.  No other other broadcast network has this kind of leverage.    However, I doubt other MVPDs would be satisfied with self-regulation in lieu of an entire revamping of the retransmission consent rules— unless, of course, they started buying up broadcast networks themselves.

Esquire Magazine Loves Governor Wallace (Anyway)

Really @esquiremag? There’s a reason why George Wallace makes it “Good to Be an American Man?” See http://t.co/VEN2F4S at #34.

Video Games and Children of Color: There is More than One Compelling Interest at Stake

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a California law banning the sale of video games to children may disproportionately harm minority children, but it was not surprising in light of the Court’s First Amendment doctrine or the Roberts court’s business-friendly stance on corporate speech.  For minority children, video games present more than one compelling interest state laws should seek to address.  In addition to seeking to address the effect of video game violence on children’s psyches, state legislators should also seek to address the impact of video games on achievement gaps in education.

At first glance, it is difficult to conclude that the Court’s decision was based on ideology rather than the letter of the law: While the Roberts court has demonstrated a proclivity for protecting corporate and business interests (see, e.g. Wal-Mart v. Dukes, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion), Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in yesterday’s Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association decision was actually joined by the two justices widely considered to be the Court’s most liberal—Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito issued concurring opinions that can be read as a refinement of their doctrine protecting corporate speech.

The majority analyzed California’s state law from a strict scrutiny point of view.  To pass Constitutional muster, state laws abridging fundamental rights, such as the right to free speech and freedom of expression, must address a compelling governmental interest and must be narrowly tailored via the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.  In the context of free speech, this means that the state law in question must be designed to prevent speech that harms the compelling interest at stake.  Here, the interest advanced by the State of California was to protect minors from violent content in video games.  However, the majority reasoned that the scientific studies presented by the State of California to justify the statute did not prove a direct connection between violent video games and the asserted harmful effects on children.  Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia further stated that the California law was not the least restrictive means that could have been advanced because it was “underinclusive” — while the California law restricted the speech of game developers,  it did not restrict violence in other media targeting children, such as children’s books and television shows.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito deliberately avoided the “broader” issue of strict scrutiny, choosing to focus instead on whether the California statute provided adequate notice to game developers as to the standards that determine which content is too violent and which is not.  Thus, not only must a state law even remotely abridging corporate speech meet the strict scrutiny standard of review, such laws must be so specific as to require legislators to put themselves in the shoes of corporate speakers trying to determine what kinds of speech are prohibited. 

Such was the disposition of the majority opinion and the concurrence, neither of which were particularly surprising or groundbreaking.  The strict scrutiny test itself remains largely unchanged, and the notion that legislators must consider the First Amendment from the point of view of speakers other than individuals is a bedrock principle, especially in light of Citizens United—this decision simply solidifies it.

Still, we are left with considerable uncertainty as to whether violent video games actually harm children.  This will obviously require further research.  This issue is particularly important for children of color.  Last month, Northwestern University released a study that found that, on average, white children spend the least amount of time per day playing video games (:56), compared to Blacks (1:25), Hispanics (1:35), and Asians (1:37).  Not only could violent video games potentially lead to real violence, more time spent playing video games could mean less time learning the skills needed to create those games.  Addressing the impact of the media on educational achievement should be considered at least as compelling as addressing the impact of media content on violence.

Allied Media 2011: What Was Right and What Was Missing

This past weekend, I got to attend the 2011 Allied Media Conference in Detroit.  Since 1999, media change agents have convened at the Allied Media conference to discuss strategies for using media to enhance grassroots advocacy and to promote independent media.  Designed to mash up ideas and generate healthy dialogue, it is one of the few—if not, the only—media conferences of its kind.  But activism is essentially where it ends.  Missing from the conference was a discussion on how to commercialize different new media ideas. 

Grassroots activism is one very critical component that is needed to reduce inequality in the United States.  The other aspect is economic empowerment—giving people the tools they need to not just organize and promote media justice, but also to make a living.

Many Washington-style civil rights advocates seek to advance social justice albeit via different means—corporate support.  Although large corporations are often demonized, their philanthropic support is desperately needed.  For all of the negative press that Comcast receives, its broadband adoption initiative gets little of the credit it deserves.  Microsoft’s new partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to identify and promote minority talent should also be commended much more often than they are.  However, corporate support is but one means for bringing about the kind of change our communities desperately need.  Washington civil rights groups also need foundation support so they are in a better position to partner with other funding recipients.  The role that the private equity sector can play in helping to commercialize businesses in low-income areas cannot be overstated.  Further, universities with enormous endowments should build innovation outposts in unlikely places, such as Detroit. 

In his Pulitzer and Aventis Prize-winning book entitled “Guns, Germs and Steel,” Jared Diamond famously argued that the dominance of Eurasian civilizations over others is attributable to positive feedback loops perpetuated by geographic proximity to resources.  According to Diamond, rather than being the result of some innate intellectual or cultural quality of its people, the rise of Eurasian civilizations was largely the result of luck.  Similarly, most of the innovation happening in America takes place on a handful of large university campuses or in a few geographically-gifted areas.  All the while, we claim that the Internet reduces geographic barriers!

On July 21^st and 22^nd, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) will be celebrating its 25^th Anniversary at its 9^th Annual Access to Capital Conference.  MMTC has been a leading voice for minorities working in and seeking to own media companies.   This year’s agenda approaches policy “from the mountaintop.”  An ordained minister and Nobel prize winner, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been to the mountaintop.  And he got there by dealing with what was happening in the streets.  But missing from MMTC’s agenda is any discussion on what is happening on the ground that prevents entrepreneurship in low-income communities. 

It is time to stop talking about social justice in silos.  It is foolhardy to regard digital age entrepreneurship as something to be disdained, rather than as a tool for social justice and empowerment.  Nor is it something that should be viewed through an anachronistic lens.

Crime and the FCC

“It wasn’t a problem until it was in Iowa or on Wall Street where there are hardly any black people.”

-Furious Styles, as played by Laurence Fishburne in Boyz n the Hood (1991)

Media and technology policy leaders must become anti-poverty advocates.  As the first anniversary of the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan passes, determining whether the Plan is actually working should be a function of one thing: its success in reducing the poverty rate.  This can only be achieved by discussing broadband in the context of the day-to-day realities of the poor. 

In addition to establishing a framework for improving individuals’ access to high speed Internet, the Plan is a roadmap for improving the lives of individuals.  Even where broadband infrastructure is physically available, additional considerations militate against widespread adoption.  Last year, the FCC, the Department of Commerce and leading research institutions—including the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies—released several reports discussing the barriers preventing people from adopting broadband.  In the Joint Center report, a perceived “lack of relevance” was a primary reason people decided not to adopt broadband. Even in stable households and communities, many consumers simply do not perceive the relevance of broadband.  But in many low-income households, this lack of relevance is also symptomatic of deeper societal ills. 

Take crime, for example.  The Plan articulates an aggressive approach toward a world-class public safety broadband communications network.  The Commission has made good on this plan by initiating a rulemaking to standardize the network. Two bills before Congress—one sponsored by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the other by Representative Peter King (R-NY)—seek to strengthen the nation’s public safety broadband communications infrastructure.  But it’s unfortunate that it took the horrific events of September 11, 2001 for the federal government to muster enough momentum for this issue.  How many years have low-income communities been rife with crime?  When Raymond Towler was picked up in Cleveland, for rolling through a stop sign, and then sentenced to 29 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, the entire system failed.  It is not just a want of DNA evidence that has led to false incriminations and an over-reliance on racial profiling tactics—they have also been due to a lack of communication. 

Unfortunately, crime disrupts learning in many low-income communities.  It reduces incentives for educational improvements, and school districts and donors are less likely to provide computers to schools without the resources to prevent equipment theft.  This eliminates an important gateway for promoting digital literacy for low-income children.

Poor educational attainment often leads to higher incidences of domestic violence among frustrated adults.  And domestic violence is an overlooked barrier to broadband adoption.  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, people with annual incomes lower than $25,000 have 3 times the risk of intimate partner violence than those who earn more than $50,000.  The sense of helplessness attendant to domestic violence can obfuscate the role of broadband.  In its safety plan for domestic violence victims, the Mayo Clinic advises against the use of home computers for seeking help and for the meticulous management of email passwords and web history data.  It is easy to see why domestic violence victims may find it safer and easier to avoid going online entirely, even where broadband is otherwise available.  Here’s an opportunity for the FCC to improve communication, both from a law enforcement perspective and from the perspective of victims whose life circumstances are so dire they are unable to perceive the relevance of broadband.

The successful implementation of the National Broadband Plan requires interdisciplinary approaches that transcend the often superficial discussions as to the difference between wired and wireless broadband.  The economic and policy analysis that Washington insiders engage in, at forty-thousand feet, can be very interesting.  But in low-income communities throughout the United States, it is simply not enough. 

It’s time for the FCC to go outside of its comfort zone.  This would not necessitate overstepping its authority.  By working in an advisory capacity to local law enforcement and the Department of Justice, the FCC would vastly improve the effectiveness of its public safety agenda.

Public Broadcasting, Rush Limbaugh and Doritos

“I hope that you do not mean to suggest that it is the job of the federal government, through the Federal Communications Commission, to determine the content that is available for Americans to consume,” wrote Rep. Joe Barton of Texas to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps last December.  Now we know Mr. Barton wants it to be this Congress’ job.

To the beneficiaries of the vastly conservative talk radio establishment, the fairness doctrine has long been the Great Satan.  And it takes many forms, apparently.  One of them is federal funding for public broadcasting.  It is quite alright for the public to subsidize hate speech, for example, via the social costs attendant to that speech, including politically-motivated hate crimes and the public resources needed to prevent and prosecute them.  But far be it from the federal government to have to pay $1.35 per citizen to preserve even the appearance that the First Amendment is worth the paper it’s printed on. 

These days, aside from the pittance the federal government spends on public broadcasting, it seems that only privately-funded content over the broadcast spectrum is worthy of First Amendment protection.  After all, the members of Congress who are pushing to have public broadcasting removed from the federal ledger can tolerate the content, so long as it is entirely funded by either advertising or foundation support—they’re betting that, in its current form, it won’t survive in the commercial marketplace.  They’re probably right.

The judiciary isn’t much help here, either.  Just last year, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision left us scrambling for signs of free speech life.

So here we are.  I can go and buy a bag of Doritos for $1.99 even though, unbeknownst to me, Doritos runs ads in Rush Limbaugh.  Even though I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh, I am effectively subsidizing him.  But somehow Rush Limbaugh’s listeners are put upon by paying $1.35 per year each for public broadcasting content.

Rural broadband disparities should not trump unemployment

If the overall unemployment rate were anywhere near what it is for African-Americans and Hispanics, the policy debates happening in Washington would be a lot different. The FCC announced today, for example, that its broadband subsidy program (known as USF) would focus on bringing high-speed Internet to rural areas. While this is a noble objective—many rural areas are among the hardest hit by unemployment—it ignores the biggest problem staring this country right in the face.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall unemployment rate in January was 9.0%. For African-Americans, January unemployment was a whopping 15.7%. Latino unemployment was 11.9%. Last year, The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Broadband Adoption Study revealed: “Nine out of ten low-income African Americans … use the Internet for job searches. Among families with an annual income of less than $20,000, 92% of African Americans and 63% of Hispanics go online for job searches as compared to only 54% of Whites.”

The Commission itself has acknowledged, among other things, that broadband is “the latest challenge to equal opportunity” …

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN (2010)(“Broadband can expand access to jobs and training, support entrepreneurship and small business growth and strengthen community development efforts.”); Id. at 3 (“Jobs increasingly require Internet skills; the share of Americans using high-speed Internet at work grew by 50% between 2003 and 2007, and the number of jobs in information and communications technology is growing 50% faster than in other sectors.”); Id. at 5 (“If learning online accelerates your education, if working online earns you extra money, if searching for jobs online connects you to more opportunities, then for those offline, the gap only widens.”); Id. at 29 (Broadband is “[C]reating high-paying jobs in important sectors such as information and communications technology (ICT).”); Id. at 59 (In considering the transition from circuitswitched network to IP-based services, the Commission “[S]hould consider the impact of the transition on employment in the communications industry, particularly given the historic role of the sector in providing high-skill, high-wage jobs.”); Id. at 129 (“Access to broadband is the latest challenge to equal opportunity . Americans . can use broadband to . apply for jobs.”); Id. at 193 (asking “Why is it that many jobs are posted online, but too many Americans-particularly in low-income and minority communities [emphasis added]-lack the access or skills to see those postings?”).

But since when do rulemaking proceedings take up mere policy statements?

The basis for determining where broadband subsidies should go should be areas of high unemployment first, and geography second. Focusing on rural areas does not cast a wide enough net. No pun intended.