Testing Minority Preferences in Broadcasting

The U.S. government has several policies and programs designed to increase the number of radio and television broadcasting stations owned by racial minorities. Increasing the number of minority-owned broadcasting stations, the government claims, will diversify the content of broadcast programs by increasing the amount of minority-oriented programming. Minority owners will program their stations differently from white owners, the government claims. In this Article we present the first econometric test of these propositions about minority ownership of broadcasting stations, as well as a number of other related propositions. We conclude that increasing the number of minority-owned broadcasting stations increases the amount of minority-oriented programming. We also conclude that increasing the number of female-owned stations-a policy that has been ruled unconstitutional-would be just as effective at increasing minority-oriented programming.