By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-8-21
The FCC has released its fifth report on broadcast ownership, according to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, and there is some slight improvement in the number of women and minority-owned stations, but the emphasis is on “slight.”
The number of women who owned full-power TV stations in 2019, the latest year for which the FCC has figures, was up from 73 to 77, but Starks points out that means women own only 5.6% of the total of 1,369 full-power TV stations.
The number of African American-owned TV stations was up from a dozen in the previous report (2017 figures) to 18 in 2019, or what Starks called an “anemic” 1%. But media diversity for Asian Americans went in the other direction, from nine full-power stations in 2017 to only four in 2019. » Read More