MINORITY HIRING May Be Facing Retrenchment.

Will a court-ordered change from mandatory to voluntary hiring of minorities and women change the face of broadcasting?

"BY ALL ACCOUNTS, I should not have succeeded in this business," says Will Wright, news director at WWOR-TV in New York City. "I started off as a product of the quintessential broken home; my father left me when I was three years old. My family was on welfare. I lived in the housing projects of Brooklyn, infested by vermin and gangs." He credits several special minority-oriented programs with giving him and other African-Americans an opportunity. "There was some realization that some people need help to be able to succeed, and I think it's very sad that some now say, `Well, we don't need any help in this area.' Yes we do. I'm proof of it."

Whether that help continues to be available is the question. Not that the broadcast industry mirrors the overall minority population of 28%, but it is far ahead of the most closely allied field--newspapers. Minorities make up 19% of television news vs. 11.6% of newspaper staffs. Interestingly, the percentage of women employees is nearly identical: 39% in TV news and 37% in newspaper. Given that the jobs are so closely related, and many of the new hires come out of the same college communication and journalism programs, what accounts for the difference? Most likely, regulations do--or at least have up to now.

For the last quarter-century, while newspapers have resolved to diversify their workforce, broadcasters have been required to do so. The Federal Communication Commission's Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) guidelines made clear that broadcasters had to take a highly proactive role in seeking out diversity in the workforce. Stations falling well below the guidelines (50% parity of the station's available labor pool) risked fines, losing their licenses, or having the FCC closely monitor their operations. All that's changed.

In the spring of 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia struck down the EEO guidelines. In an unusual move, the court went on to say that, while the hiring guidelines for women were not being challenged in the case before it, that, if challenged, those, too, would be struck down. The court did not strike down rules against discrimination, only the hiring guidelines and percentages. In the face of a conservative Supreme Court, which has been consistently leery of affirmative action programs, the FCC ultimately opted not to appeal the ruling.