Honolulu Weekly

Local advocacy groups are awaiting a response from the Federal Communications Commission on a challenge filed last week to stop a shared services agreement involving three local television stations. Media Council of Hawaii–formerly Honolulu Community Media Council–requested an emergency order from the FCC to halt the agreement, which is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 18.

It comes on the heels of the August announcement that Alabama-based Raycom Media, which owns local NBC affiliate KHNL and KFVE, plans to meld news operations with local CBS affiliate KGMB, owned by Virginia-based MCG Captial Corp. The agreement–which Raycom said will result in massive lay-offs across the stations–would combine the three stations’ operations under one roof, though representatives for the stations say viewers wouldn’t see a change to programming.

“We are extremely concerned about the merging of these television stations and what that will mean for local news in Hawaii,” said Nikki Love of the public advocacy group Common Cause Hawaii. “We think a vibrant democracy depends on robust reporting from diverse sources and viewpoints.”

The suit alleges the agreement would violate several FCC regulations relating to public interest, fair competition and anti-trust law, including federal law that prohibits one entity from controlling two or more top-four stations in a single market.

“Ours is a small but diverse and very complicated community,” said Media Council of Hawaii President Chris Conybeare. “By concentrating editorial control, this merger will reduce competition in local news and programming and will reduce diversity of viewpoints and lower the quality of news and other programming. Our island communities require more, not fewer, voices.”

In considering the legality of ownership-crossover for broadcast, the FCC considers the following four factors:

• The extent to which the combination will increase the amount of local news in the market.

• Whether each media outlet in the combination will exercise independent news judgment.

• The level of concentration in the market.

• The financial condition of the TV station, and whether the new owner plans to invest in newsroom operations if either outlet is in financial distress.

Representatives from MCG Capital Corp. said the consolidation was the only way to save financially flailing KGMB, which plummeted in value from $40 million to $22 million since 2007. And while the FCC does take into consideration a news organization’s financial standing in these cases, lawyers representing the Media Council of Hawaii call the agreement “blantantly unlawful,” adding that Raycom has failed to file the appropriate paperwork requesting a waiver from the laws the agreement would allegedly break.