Feedback May 2002 (Vol 43 No 2)

On the programming front, in early 2001 the cable network Lifetime reportedprior-year advertising sales of $570 million and it extended its reach to 80.3 millionhouseholds. Lifetime was ranked first during the first quarter 2001 among prime timecable offerings with a 2.0 Nielsen rating, up 18% from the year before (Liebeskind,2001, S6). Meanwhile, rival cable network “Oxygen” began its second year ofoperation still fighting to achieve national distribution, while yet a third competitorentered the field: AMC renamed its “Romance Classics” network “WE,” targetingwomen cable viewers (Liebeskind, 2001, S6). Broadcasting & Cable ran a six-pagefeature in October on the “next wave” of “women media execs poised for greatness,”focusing on 11 up-and-coming women 2 in radio and television (“The Next Wave,”2001, p. 30). And although not domestic programming, it is worth noting that 2001saw the “first femme channel in the Arab world” – the Nefertiti Channel in Egypt(Fine, 2001, p. 20).On the regulatory front, 2001 began with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.Circuit striking down as unconstitutional the Federal Communications CommissionEqual Employment Opportunity (EEO) rules that would have required broadcastersand cable companies to record and report their minority-recruiting efforts for both raceand gender (Bachman, 2001; Labaton, 2001; McConnell, 2001a). This was the secondtime the court struck down the FCC EEO rules. In 1998, when the first set of ruleswas overturned 3 then chair Bill Kennard worked to revise them (Kennard, 1998). Thesecond set of EEO rules was announced in January 2000 (Kimball, 2000). 4 In its 2001reversal the court stated that the FCC rule (specifically the second of two options) 5created “…a race-based classification that is not narrowly tailored to support acompelling government interest and is therefore unconstitutional” and implied that norecruiting rule could survive court scrutiny because it was not clear whether thegovernment should be in the business of trying to ensure media diversity (McConnell,2001d, p. 27). By mid-year 2001, the Justice Department, which represented the FCC,told the Court of Appeals that it did not think the case was important enough toappeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court subsequently ruled that it would not,in fact, entertain an appeal of its January decision (McConnell, 2001b). In October theFCC officially announced that it would not appeal (“FCC Won’t Prod,” 2001).Despite this lack of encouragement, the ruling left open the possibility that theCommission could attempt to craft rules that would pass constitutional muster, and atthe end of 2001, FCC Chair Michael Powell announced plans to attempt to draft EEOrules for yet a third time (McConnell, 2001c). The proposed new EEO rules wereannounced on December 13, 2001, at which time the FCC “…reaffirmed its longstandinganti-discrimination rule and proposed to require broad outreach to allqualified job candidates for positions at radio, television and cable companies”(Spivack, 2001). In announcing its Second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 6 the FCCpress release said the Commission was “requiring broadcasters and cable entities,including MVPDs [multichannel video program distributors] to recruit for every fulltimevacancy in a manner designed to achieve broad outreach” (Spivack, 2001). Theproposed FCC rules would require two supplemental recruiting measures, includingsending vacancy announcements on request to recruiting organizations; and alsoselecting from “…a menu of non-vacancy specific outreach approaches, such as jobfairs, internship programs, and interaction with educational and community groups”30Feedback May 2002 (Vol. 43, No. 2)