[Mediaresearchhub-News] Grantee Profile: Study Suggests that Concentrated Station Ownership Is Detrimental to Children's Educational TV

Tue Oct 2 17:04:06 EDT 2007

Necessary Knowledge Grantee Profile: 

Study Suggests that Concentrated Station Ownership Is Detrimental to
Children's Educational TV

The children's advocacy group Children Now worked with  researcher
Katharine Heintz-Knowles, PhD to examine how ownership patterns of
television stations affect the amount of children's educational
programming they broadcast.  In contrast to industry claims, the study
found that more concentrated ownership of TV stations did not lead to
more educational TV.  In fact there is evidence that diversely held
television markets provide more hours of educational programming.  The
study concludes that concentration of television station ownership in a
market does not improve a station's public service to the children in
that market. Instead, this analysis suggests such concentration of
ownership has a clear, negative impact on programming for children. 

On July 24, 2006, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asked the
general public to comment on the nation's media ownership policies. One
of the rules the Commission is considering addresses whether or not a
single owner should be allowed to own two or three broadcast television
stations in the same market - what they call "duopolies" and
"triopolies." 

Many public interest groups, including Children Now, are concerned about
how the formation of duopolies and triopolies may affect the quantity
and quality of programs broadcast for children.  While there is a
longstanding public debate on the beneficial and detrimental affects of
television viewing on children, there are many studies that show that
quality educational television programming can have a positive effect on
a child's ability to succeed in school.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is of the view that that
duopoly ownership is "necessary to preserve and enhance television
broadcasters' ability to serve their viewers and communities in markets
of all sizes." This study was designed to test whether or not the NAB's
claim is true with regard to children. More specifically, the study
looks at how the children's programming provided by duopoly stations
compares with individually owned competitors in a given market.

This research examined the number of children's programs and weekly
hours of children's programming for all commercial broadcast television
stations in eight U.S. markets, of varying geographic location and
market size. The study focused on two time periods: 1998, before any
duopolies existed, and 2006, after several duopolies were established in
the markets. 

The results indicated that there has been a dramatic decrease in
children's programming over the past eight years in every market in the
study. But the overall trend was not the same for all stations. A
comparison of duopoly and non-duopoly stations revealed that by 2006
duopoly stations at best performed no better than non-duopoly stations,
and at worst reduced the number of children's series and weekly hours of
children's programming at significantly greater rates than did
non-duopoly stations. There were no markets in which duopoly stations
reduced their children's programming less than did the non-duopoly
stations.

Most duopoly stations offered more children's programming before they
became duopolies. And since the majority of duopoly stations in 2006
offered less children's programming than did non-duopoly stations, this
study clearly shows that the formation of duopolies does not, as the NAB
claims, "preserve and enhance" station's abilities to serve the needs of
children. Instead, this study lends support to the view that allowing a
single owner to own more than one television station in a market leads
to a decrease in educational programming.  

Given the results of this research, Children Now calls upon the FCC to
protect children's interests by maintaining the existing media ownership
rules and not allowing further media consolidation, specifically the
formation of duopolies and triopolies.

The full report "Big Media, Little Kids 2" is available online at the
Children Now website at http://childrennow.org
<http://publications.childrennow.org/publications/media/bigmedialittleki
ds2_2007.cfm>  .

The research was funded by a small grant from the Social Science
Research Council's Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere
program.

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