Media Contact: 
Anne Veigle, (202) 418-0506
anne.veigle@fcc.gov

For Immediate Release
 
FCC RELEASES PAPER ANALYZING LOCAL TELEVISION NEWS OPERATIONS MEASURED AGAINST MARKET SIZE

WASHINGTON, January 15, 2021—The FCC’s Office of Economics and Analytics today released a new paper titled “Market Size and Local Television News.”  This report focuses on the relationship between the number of independent local television news operations in a market and the size of the market, as measured by number of television households.  The paper is expected to help policymakers assess the state of competition, localism, and diversity in the media market.

“The Commission is called upon to review media ownership regulations every four years, and it is my hope that this paper will be a valuable input to that enterprise,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.  “More generally, I’m pleased at this latest evidence that the Office of Economics and Analytics, which we created in 2018, has built a culture in which our economists are now able and willing to write white papers exploring important topics.”

The findings are relevant for the Commission’s Quadrennial Review of media ownership regulations, as well as the evaluation of individual applications for local television station mergers.  FCC media ownership policy has three goals—competition, localism, and diversity—as outlined in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that opened the current Quadrennial Review.  The analysis in this paper could help policymakers assess whether a market is likely to sustain the current number of local news operations or whether a proposed merger is likely to result in a favorable tradeoff of diversity for localism, an important complement to examination of the merger’s impact on competition.

The working paper was written by economist Kim Makuch and former FCC Deputy Chief Economist Jonathan Levy.  “Kim and Jonathan’s work, the third OEA working paper released since December, demonstrates the breadth and versatility of economic analysis that the office provides to the agency,” said OEA Chief Giulia McHenry.  “The Commission is called upon to make important tradeoffs among sometimes competing media ownership policy goals, and this paper provides it with an important tool for doing so.”

The paper is available at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-369214A1.pdf.  For more information about the Office of Economics and Analytics, see https://www.fcc.gov/economics-and-analytics.

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Media Relations: (202) 418-0500 / ASL: (844) 432-2275 / Twitter: @FCC / www.fcc.gov 

This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action.  Release of the full text of a Commission order 
constitutes official action.  See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).