Opinion ID: 658298
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Objectivity

Text: 44 Aside from the substantive advantages that the Commission attributes to integration, the Commission claims a procedural advantage. As a structural factor, it says, the integration criterion can be applied more consistently and objectively than other possible ways of assessing an applicant's likely responsiveness to community needs. Second Remand Order, 8 F.C.C.Rec. at 1676. 45 Any objectivity added by the integration criterion is unfortunately illusory. The Commission's scores for quantitative integration merely lend the policy a veneer of precision; every step towards the magic number is packed with subjective judgments, some generic, some ad hoc. 46 At a generic level, the Commission's weighting system, by which it squares the fraction representing the owner's proposed working portion of a 40-hour week, is simply a fancy way for the Commission to express its view that the values of integration fall off sharply when owner-managers work less than full-time. See Omaha TV 15, Inc., 4 F.C.C.Rec. 730, 734 (1988). It has not a shred of data supporting the basic conjecture, let alone that the relationship is best captured by squaring the fraction rather than cubing it. 47 Similarly, the Commission's formula seems to assume that the importance of ownership share varies on a linear basis, disregarding issues of control that might seem critical. Thus, if one applicant proposes the full-time integration of its 55% owner and the other applicant proposes the full-time integration of its 45% owner, neither applicant enjoys a clear advantage even though only the former owner-manager is assured of controlling station policy. But a 13% difference in the ownership shares of two competing full-time owner-managers translates into a decisive 1300 spread even where both have control (e.g., 75% and 88%), and thus will nullify any qualitative differences. 48 Applying the formula requires more subjective decisions. In calculating the hours to be worked by each applicant-owner, for example, the Commission usually takes the prospective owner's word at face value, even though it knows that the promise is likely made in large part to please the Commission, that the Commission will do little or nothing to enforce the promise, and that the promise therefore may quite possibly be bogus. For the most part, only if a rival makes out an affirmative case that the promise is unreliable will the Commission bother to consider the problem--and, necessarily, it does so then subject to the usual shortcomings of [304 U.S.App.D.C. 111] anyone seeking to penetrate the mysteries of the human heart. 49 Further, many cases turn on whether a proposed job should be classified as part of station management. Compare, e.g., Merrimack Valley Broadcasting, Inc., 92 F.C.C.2d 506, 511 p 8 (Rev.Bd.1982) (finding Minority Affairs Director, Women's Affairs Director, and Community Affairs Director all managerial positions) with Religious Broadcasting Network, 3 F.C.C.Rec. 4085, 4100 p 49 (Rev.Bd.1988) (finding Director of Public and Community Affairs a non-managerial position because occupant would not set any station policies). Not surprisingly, Merrimack makes no mention of policy-making, and Religious Broadcasting makes no mention of Merrimack. 50 So far as measuring ownership is concerned, the Commission's policy provides rich incentives for the adoption of firm structures that we characterized in Bechtel I (quoting Bechtel) as strange and unnatural. 957 F.2d at 880. After all, if a station can be acquired for legal fees and minor engineering services, and can be sold a year later for several million dollars, one would expect to see a good deal of ingenuity. In Bechtel I we recited some of the startling arrangements manifested just in this case itself: 51 In our case, for example, best friends and co-owners of a station swear not to consult with each other; family members with valuable broadcast knowledge and experience agree not to assist the tyro station manager in the family; people with steady jobs and families in one city pledge to leave them and move permanently to another; and wealthy retirees promise to move to and work in small summer towns in Delaware with which they have no former connection. 52 Id. 53 In the Notice of Proposed Rule Making triggered by Bechtel I, the Commission itself acknowledged that comparative hearings often appear to become bogged down in litigating subjective or trivial distinctions. 7 F.C.C.Rec. 2664, 2665 p 9 (1992). It also observed, accurately enough we think, that [e]xamination of potentially unreliable proposals can be a time-consuming and uncertain process. See id. at 15. Even in its brief here, while at one moment advancing objectivity as a major advantage of the integration preference, the Commission answers Bechtel's argument about the impermanence of integration by suggesting that integration credit is denied when an applicant has a present intention to sell his station quickly, Brief for Respondent at 19, and touts its ability to detect when integration proposals are unreliable, id. at 9, or irreconcilable with the exercise of sound business judgment, id. at 17 (quoting Royce Int'l Broadcasting, 5 F.C.C.Rec. 7063, 7065 n. 10 (1990)). Reading the record in this case, and in a range of other cases, we are bound to say that only the Commission's lamentations about undue subjectivity have the ring of truth. 54