House Committee Prepares For Media Ownership Hearing

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications will be holding a hearing on media ownership on Wednesday.

Republicans on the committee are pushing for changes in the current ownership guidelines following an FCC vote earlier this years that prevented broadcasters from sharing advertising sales resources.

The majority memo for Wednesday's meeting argues that "the commission’s decades-old ownership rules simply have not kept up with changes in the media marketplace and are hampering traditional media’s ability to compete." That is also the view held by the broadcast industry, which has requested a federal court review the rules.

The witness for Wednesday's hearing includes Jane Mago, general counsel for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Hispanic Media Coalition General Counsel Jessica Gonzalez, Newspaper Guild-CWA President Bernard Lunzer, Paul Boyle, senior vice president of public policy at the Newspaper Association of America, Bill Lake, chief of the FCC’s Media Bureau and RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank.