Florida’s Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has a difficult decision ahead of him: Should he abandon the GOP and continue his bid to represent the state in the U.S. Senate as an independent?  Crist has until April 30 to make up his mind, but in the meantime, one CBC member whispered in BE.com’s ear, Rep. Kendrick Meek, who also has his sights set on the Senate, “is grinning from ear to ear.”

That’s because the state’s Republican Party may be imploding, which could potentially boost Meek’s prospects. In addition to Crist’s possible defection, the IRS and the FBI reportedly are investigating more than two dozen party and elected officials for using party-issued credit cards for personal expenses. The group includes Crist’s Republican primary opponent Marco Rubio, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives in Florida and current Tea Party darling.

Meek said he expects to win in the fall, but in the meantime, he added, “We don’t want to get in the middle of what’s going on with the GOP and internal politics. But, I can tell you that what the GOP is talking about now, especially the leadership in Florida, is not what Floridians want to hear as it relates to getting people back to work.”

David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said recent surveys have found the three candidates essentially tied if Crist runs as an independent. Meek’s success at the polls in November will depend on how well he can turn out his base. More than two-third of Florida’s voters are non-white, Bositis added, and Obama got 43% of the overall vote there in 2008.

“If Meek got a large turnout and an independent Crist got a significant portion of Republic votes, it could come down to the wire in a general election,” said Bositis.

No Voting Rights for D.C.

The District of Columbia lost yet another opportunity to gain a vote in Congress this week. During his weekly pen and pad session with reporters Tuesday, a visibly disappointed House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) announced that a vote on the legislation had been removed from the floor schedule. The decision was made after consulting with D.C.’s nonvoting delegate. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a longtime voting rights advocate, found language added to the bill that would restrict the District’s right to enact gun control laws risible.

Hoyer said that he was “profoundly disappointed” that Congress would not consider legislation that would give 600,000 District residents a vote in the House, but “the price was too high.”

According to Norton, despite concerns about the gun issues, she had spent the past year pushing the bill forward because the current majorities in the House and Senate may not exist after November, making the vote that had been scheduled for Thursday its best chance for passage. She asked Hoyer to cancel the vote because of “three outrageous provisions” in an updated version of the bill that made the gun amendment “even worse than I thought was possible,” Norton explained in a statement, and because those changes would cause anti-gun senators to drop their support.

Under the provisions added to the bill, the District would be barred from prohibiting people from carrying concealed weapons; the right of the city’s police chief to refuse the issuance of concealed carry licenses would be severely limited; and the District would be unable to prohibit guns in city-controlled buildings or structures that don’t have security measures in place to detect them. A fourth would prevent residential and commercial building owners from restricting or prohibiting firearm possession by tenants.

“These provisions are so over the top, they are unworthy of serious consideration,” Norton said.
Although Hoyer was pessimistic about the prospect of getting a vote on the legislation during this Congress, Norton said that she is already exploring ways to get a voting rights bill passed this year.

Arbitron Reaches Agreement on Measuring Minority Audiences

Minority broadcasters and Arbitron finally reached an agreement Thursday regarding the use of the Portable People Meter. Throughout the long-running dispute, the broadcasters have claimed that the electronic measurement device undercounted minority audiences.

Arbitron has agreed to begin in-person recruiting in high-density black and Hispanic neighborhoods in July, which will enable the company to reach young minority adults who may not have landline phones at home. It also will implement address-based sampling so that landline recruiting will be more accurate. Additional initiatives include increasing by 10% the PPM sample size for people aged 18-54; forming a minority leadership council and expanding advertiser outreach for minority radio.

“We have been talking with Arbitron for more than three years about PPM, and I am pleased that we have been able to come to an agreement for moving forward,” said Jim Winston, executive director of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters.

The accord was reached at the bequest of Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Towns had warned the parties that if they couldn’t find a solution, Congress would. He believed that undercounting minorities decreased both airwave diversity and minority broadcasters’ bottom lines and held several hearings on the issue.

“With this agreement, I believe that minority listeners will be counted and minority-owned radio stations will work more closely in a collaborative effort to ensure the accuracy of ratings,” said Towns. “My committee will closely monitor progress on implementing this agreement.”IRS Encourages Small Businesses to Check Out Healthcare Credit

More often than not, receiving something in the mail from the IRS is not good. But for once the agency has some positive news to share and is mailing postcards to small businesses to alert them to a healthcare tax credit they may immediately qualify for.

Small firms that pay at least half the cost of single coverage for their employees this year are eligible for a tax credit specifically created to help businesses and tax-exempt organizations whose employees are primarily low and moderate income workers. For the next three years, the maximum credit will be 35% of premiums paid by small businesses and 25% for the tax-exempts.

The mailing, said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, is intended to encourage small businesses to learn more about the credit and to take advantage of it if they qualify. The postcard can be viewed here.

Small Business Programs Given Three-Month Extension

The Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs and others that fall under the Small Business Investment Act and were set to expire on April 30 have been given a lifeline. The U.S. Senate gave the programs, which were already operating under a temporary extender, a three-month extension this week and the measure will now go to the House for a vote. According to the Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee, the two chambers are still trying to negotiate “a longer, more comprehensive agreement.”

The SBIR program has generated more than 84,000 patents and millions of jobs and small businesses employ 41% of the nation’s high-tech workers. It is used by eleven federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation.

“Over the next three months, I encourage the entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers looking for jobs, or waiting for a chance to explore a promising and innovative idea, to apply for research projects through these programs. SBIR and STTR entrepreneurs start businesses, create jobs and account for 25 percent of our nation’s innovators, and we are ready to support them and their businesses,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, chair of the Senate small business panel.

President Obama and Congress have charged the Federal Communications Commission with the task of developing a national broadband strategy by February 17, 2010. The goal is to provide underserved communities with this vital technology and at the same time create scores of new jobs. The commission has held public forums on the issue and invited comment from interested parties.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and five organizations of black elected officials released a report on Tuesday, titled “Broadband Imperatives for African Americans,” which included recommendations to increase its use in minority communities.

“Broadband is the major infrastructure challenge of our generation. It is for us what railroads, electricity, and other universal services were in the past,” said FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, during the release of the report. “[It’s] essential for building businesses and getting jobs.” He also said that the report would be helpful as the agency develops its national strategy.

Long before Google, WiFi, and Blackberry, the term digital divide was coined to describe the gap between those with and without access to the Internet. Today that divide persists, with blacks lagging behind whites and Hispanics in the adoption and use of broadband at home. A Pew study found that in 2008-09, the rate of growth for blacks, whites and Hispanics increased by 7%, 14% and 21%, respectively. The reasons vary—from cost to availability–but minorities risk losing out on important educational and economic opportunities that can be gained through the use of broadband technology.

The report recommends restructuring the Universal Service Fund, mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to increase national access to advanced telecommunications services to help households pay for broadband; government subsidies for Internet service and hardware; free service for libraries and schools in low-income areas and their surrounding communities; and stimulus funds for digital awareness and broadband literacy campaigns.

“[This] is the first time that African American elected officials have issued a formal statement to the FCC in this area,” said Joint Center president Ralph B. Everett. “As the nation strives for universal access to high-speed networks, these elected and appointed officials can and will play a vitally important role in ensuring that the great promise of broadband really does deliver progress and opportunity in struggling communities.”

Troubles for Arbitron People Meter

New York Rep. Edolphus Towns, launched an investigation this summer of Arbitron Inc.’s use of the Personal People Meter, a device used to rate radio audiences across the country.  The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he chairs had received numerous complaints from minority broadcasters who believed the meter produces inaccurate samplings of the listening preferences of minorities and certain age groups. When Arbitron submitted documentation that he considered insufficient and prohibited the Media Rating Council, which oversees audience measurement services for member clients like Arbitron, to provide its documents to the panel, Towns issued a subpoena to the council.

This week the House panel released a summary of MRC’s findings that there are “persistent problems” with the meter. A summary of the findings Towns released showed that in New York, for example, where the average sample audience is 5400 participants, Arbitron uses 500 recruits to represent more than 4 million ethnic minorities.

“There are some serious problems that we hope we can sit down with them to correct. The sample they’re using is just not adequate and they’re not doing any serious recruiting in minority communities. Minority radio stations are really getting clobbered because their ratings are going down,” said Towns, adding that Arbitron has indicated an awareness that problems exist.

But Arbitron immediately disputed the findings and issued a statement that the company is “extremely surprised and disappointed” by the committee’s “analysis and erroneous conclusions” and that it looks forward to a “fact-based dialogue” to clarify those conclusions.

Hearing Explores Recession’s Disparate Impact on Minorities

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing this week to examine the economic downturn’s effect on minorities, particularly in relation to unemployment and home foreclosures.

“For most racial and ethnic minority groups, the Great Recession is in reality a Great Depression. People of color were worse off before the start of [the] downturn and have been losing their jobs and their homes at a faster rate ever since,” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Edolphus Towns (N.Y.).

Testimony and an accompanying report from Christian Weller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), on how to level the economic recovery field supported this view. During this recession, which has lasted longer than others, businesses are laying off workers who are facing more difficulty finding new jobs, which in turn impacts foreclosure rates and credit card defaults, now at record highs.

To ensure that minority employment gains match or exceed whites’ Weller recommended investment in the creation of green jobs in low-income communities that will “provide opportunities for advancement and pay good wages” to people without higher education; programs that encourage the pursuit of higher education; and stronger regulations and consumer protections to prevent unfair lending practices.

CAP hosted a conference call on minorities and the recession featuring Weller and representatives from the National Urban League, the National Council of La Raza and the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, which can be heard here.

Williams

“I’ve been in radio for 23 years,”says  Williams, who is the host of The Wendy Williams Show on Fox. “While I love radio, I had to leave WBLS and radio for now. It’s not to say I’ll never be back. This TV show is a dream come true.”

It remains to be seen how the popular host’s transition will impact the show’s home, WBLS-FM. Owned by I.C.B.C. Broadcast Holdings, Inc. (No. 80 on the BE Industrial/Service Companies list with $50.6 million in revenue) Williams’ midday show was a revenue driver for the company, says Deon Levingston, WBLS vice president and general manager. The show recently ranked No. 1 among the 25-54 age group and reaches 778,000 listeners.

“WBLS has been a dominate radio station in America for the last few years and Wendy Williams and Steve Harvey helped us get to that point, radio ratings wise, and revenue wise.”

A powerful force among African Americans, black radio has long served as a means of information, but tepid ad sales, a proposed performance tax, and cost cutting measures threaten its livelihood. Williams’ departure from radio for television signals a changing tide in how content is consumed. It also illustrates black radio’s struggle to develop a content format and business model to recapture dwindling revenue, says Chris Smith, professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California.

“It’s very difficult in this changing business environment for traditional media like print and radio to retain talent,” Smith says. “Everything is becoming more TV and online oriented.”

Williams’s fans appear to agree. “According to some of the e-mails I’ve been receiving, people are saying that’s it. New York [City] black radio is done,” Williams says. “Am I really of force like that? I don’t know.”

Keeping the same capital structure from past decades will spell doom for the survival of black radio, Smith adds, explaining the key to success lies in embracing new media to attract listeners.

Radio advertising expenditures for the first quarter of 2009 plunged 14.2% year-over-year, according to data released today by marketing research firm, TNS Media Intelligence, in June.

“I hope traditional black radio outlets try to get hold of [new media] and embrace it and have that be apart of the emerging legacy for themselves,” Smith says.

From the archives: One-on-one with Wendy Williams