Does Ownership Matter? Localism, Content, and the Federal Communications Commission

This study examines the relation between local news content and ownership structure in 17 television markets in the United States. It is an extension of the localism research that was conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2004 and the Local Television News Media Project at the University of Delaware in 2007 (see FCC, 2007). The findings point to the need to consider television markets as the appropriate unit of analysis when examining the effect of ownership on local content. Ownership does matter in the production of news on local broadcasts. When examining only station-level factors, independent stations broadcast more local content on their newscasts than those stations that were either (a) owned-and-operated (O&O) and part of a duopoly, (b) O&O-only, or (c) part of a duopoly-only. However, when examining station-level and market-level factors of television markets, the station-level ownership profiles positively affected local content. Market-level factors that indicated more consolidation negatively affected the proportion of local news presented in the entire designated market area.