Television station ownership characteristics and local news and public affairs programming: an expanded analysis of FCC data

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between television station ownership characteristics and local news and public affairs programming through an expanded analysis of data from the Federal Communication's Commission (FCC's) recent study of Big Four broadcast network affiliates. The results indicate that the FCC's conclusion that network‐owned and operated stations provide more local news and public affairs programming than other affiliates, and that stations with newspaper holdings provide more local news and public affairs programming than stations without newspaper holdings holds up only when these two program types are analyzed in combination. When these two program types are analyzed independently, and when additional explanatory factors are taken into consideration, these ownership characteristics are positively related to news programming, but not to public affairs programming.

Market Competition, Station Ownership, and Local Public Affairs Programming on Broadcast Television

“…Stations with greater financial resources may be more inclined to provide local informational programming, given the greater costs associated with producing original locally oriented content, as opposed to purchasing syndicated content. This perspective has found support in previous research (see FCC, 1984; Napoli, 2004; Wirth & Wollert, 1979). A station’s status as a very high frequency (VHF) or ultra high frequency (UHF) broadcaster was included as a control variable as well.…”

“…It also, however, may be the case that as a media market grows more competitive, content providers may establish specific programming niches for themselves and cede certain program types to their competitors in an effort to differentiate themselves (see Hamilton, 2004; Napoli, 2004). Thus, in the public affairs programming context, it may be that the growth of cable television and noncommercial stations in a market may lead broadcasters to offer less local public affairs programming as broadcasters may cede that programming category to their cable and noncommercial competitors.…”

Objectivity and Information Bias in Campaign News

“…These patterns are attributed to their drive for profits at the behest of shareholders (Baker, ; Dunaway, ; Hamilton, ). The measure we use is intended to capture the various ownership characteristics that scholarly work has investigated: publicly traded versus privately owned and controlled ownership (Dunaway, ; Hamilton, ; Shoemaker & Reese, ); chain ownership (Hamilton, ); and nonlocal ownership (Hood, ; Napoli, ).…”

Provision of Internet privacy and market conditions: An empirical analysis

“…Yet importing the insights from the industrial organization model, it may be that the provision of privacy protection results from multiple factors. Whereas the marketplace, under no explicit FTC regulatory oversight, has been assumed to operate in favor of the normative interest of privacy rights, the industrial organization model suggests a different conclusion-namely, that a desire for marketplace efficiency may or may not translate into organizational conduct consistent with a socially desirable objective (Napoli, 2004) such as privacy protection. It is not clear that marketplace concerns should be sufficient to motivate companies to take somewhat burdensome steps, which lie beyond the scope of these companies' core online business practices to assure consumers' privacy protection.…”

“…Although a market characteristic was implicitly used in these studies as a conditional variable for the presence of certain website features, numerous market variables were never actually analyzed in predictive models. Empirical studies that explicitly model the relationship between market structure and content are abundant in the broadcasting sector (e.g., Berry & Waldfogel, 2001;Chambers, 2003;Napoli, 2004;Yan & Park, 2009), but few such comparable studies of websites exist. The present study contributes toward filling this area of Internet research by statistically examining how market and business characteristics affected the level of privacy provision in a group of commercial sites sampled in 2008.…”