Ethnic programmers petition FCC against sale of WNYC-TV
Originally published in Current, Oct. 23, 1995
By Steve Behrens
A group of ethnic programmers who rent time on the municipally owned WNYC-TV, New York City, has petitioned the FCC to block the sale of the station to a partnership of ITT and Dow Jones Television. [The FCC didn't block the sale, which went through.]
The Coalition for Ethnic Broadcasters in New York filed papers Oct. 12 [1995], opposing the transfer of the license, and ITT/Dow Jones is expected to file a reply this week.
WNYC Foundation, the nonprofit organization that runs the WNYC-TV and its sister AM and FM stations, is not involved in the case; in March it acquiesced to the TV sale when the city agreed to sell the radio operation to the foundation [earlier article].
The financially strapped city government has pursued its sale of WNYC-TV on the belief that the station can be sold for commercial use since the FCC doesn't list it as a reserved noncommercial channel.
But the ethnic programmers' coalition argues in its petition that the city had represented WNYC-TV as a noncommercial station in 1975, when it was defending its joint ownership of the three licenses.
"They made a promise to the commission,'' says the coalition's Washington attorney, Arthur Belendiuk. "They said, 'Please let us keep an AM, an FM and a TV station, because we are operating them as a public trust.' ''
By accepting that claim and renewing WNYC's licenses, it's clear "that WNYC-TV has been designated a noncommercial station and that it must continue to operate as a noncommercial station,'' the petition says. Now the city wants to sell off the TV license as a commercial one. "They want to have their cake and eat it, too,'' comments Belendiuk. The city should have to prove its case in a rulemaking proceeding, he contends.
Michael S. Wroblewski, attorney for ITT/Dow Jones, said the coalition cited no legal precedent that the 1975 renewal requires the city to operate WNYC as a public station.
The ethnic programmers also charge that taking their shows off the air would deprive the region's viewers of relevant and locally produced programs and children's programs, contrary to the public interest. These will be lost if ITT/Dow Jones develop the channel as a national superstation specializing in business news and sports, as planned.
Wroblewski said the Supreme Court in 1981 ruled out format changes as grounds for denying an FCC license. He also dismissed another of the petition's arguments--that selling WNYC-TV will violate FCC crossownership rules, since Dow Jones publishes the Wall Street Journal. He said the Journal is a national publication, explicitly exempted from cable-newspaper crossownership rules in the 1984 congressional committee report on the law that established them.
Ironically, the petitioners who contend that WNYC-TV is a noncommercial station were themselves running commercials during their ethnic programs on the channel. But they say commercials are the only way to support their targeted programs, which serve Chinese, Indian, Haitian, Hispanic, Italian, Pakistani, Japanese, Policy and Ukrainian immigrants.
As an alternative home for the displaced ethnic programmers, the city government has suggested its public access cable channel, Crosswalks, but the ethnic programmers say it prohibits commercial sponsorship. The coalition also says the municipal cable channel reaches only 1.4 million cable households in the city, compared to the 7 million households in the tristate region that WNYC-TV can reach.
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Earlier news: Mayor's compromise: sell WNYC-TV to highest bidder, sell WNYC Radio at discount to WNYC Foundation, 1995.