Low Power Radio
- Overview & Table of Contents
- What is LPFM?
- Congress Second Guesses its Expert Agency on Spectrum Allocation
- Low Power Radio: An Antidote to the Modern Radio Industry
- Demographics of Radio Station Ownership
- Participation in Employment by Minorities and Women
- Radio Consolidation and Homogenization
- Conclusion
Examples of Low Power Stations
Appendices
Ownership and Employment in Radio
LCCR has long regarded expanding minority and female ownership in media as important goals because of the powerful role the media plays in the democratic process, as well as in shaping perceptions about who we are as individuals and as a nation. By providing community leaders the opportunity to have a voice on the public airwaves where no such opportunity previously existed, LPFM will help promote greater diversity on the public airwaves — diversity that is sorely lacking.
Despite a national consensus going back to the late 1960s on the importance of diversity in media ownership and employment, progress has slowed to a crawl in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In 2007, the nonpartisan media advocacy group Free Press completed the most thorough analysis of the demographics of radio station ownership ever conducted. Their findings are in the following chart:
6%
Women own just 6 percent of all full-power commercial broadcast radio stations, even though they comprise 51 percent of the U.S. population.
7.7%
Racial or ethnic minorities own just 7.7 percent of all full-power commercial broadcast radio stations, though they account for 33 percent of the U.S. population.
2.9%
Latinos own just 2.9 percent of all U.S. full-power commercial broadcast radio stations, but they comprise 15 percent of the U.S. population and are the nation’s largest ethnic minority group.
3.4%
African Americans own only 3.4 percent of this country’s full-power commercial broadcast radio stations but account for 13 percent of the entire U.S. population.
< 1%
People of Asian descent own less than 1 percent of full-power commercial broadcast radio stations, though they make up 4 percent of the U.S. population.
87.2%
Non-Hispanic white owners control 87.2 percent of the full-power commercial broadcast radio stations operating in the United States.
4.7%
Just 4.7 percent of all full-power commercial broadcast radio stations are owned by an entity with a female CEO or president.
1%
Only 1 percent of the stations not owned by women are controlled by an entity with a female CEO or president.
8%
Just 8 percent of all full-power commercial broadcast radio stations are owned by an entity with a CEO or president who is a racial or ethnic minority.
<1%
Less than 1 percent of stations not owned by people of color are controlled by an entity with a minority CEO or president.5
Next Section: Participation in Employment by Minorities and Women
5. S. Derek Turner, Off the Dial: Female and Minority Ownership in Broadcast Roles, Free Press (2007).
