[RTC List] FCC Changes!

[Sean McLaughlin]

Colleagues --

Here's two cents on U.S. gov't transition news this week:

A Sea Change at the FCC!  - see MediaWeek article below - Copps Named 
Acting FCC Chair

With Copps and Adelstein forming the majority - it is hard to overstate 
the degree of change that has occurred at the FCC this week.  

Copps and Adelstein have been very active representing minority views, 
hosted dozens of public meetings around the nation, and for the record 
they've authored very eloquent dissents to most of the major policy 
decisions taken by previous FCC majorities - for many years, under 
tenures of both Michael Powell and Kevin Martin. 

The stage is set now for a very different FCC than we have seen for a 
generation!

Not your Father's FCC!

Copied below is "The Price of Free Airwaves" an Op-Ed by Copps that 
appeared in the NYTimes in June 2007 - provides a sense of his 
principled perspective on spectrum policy...

______________________________________




Mediaweek

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/local-broadcast/e3i42c15b7daee64da35b0e966eff5e7947


      Copps Named Acting FCC Chair


      Interim appointment follows resignation of Republican Kevin Martin

Jan 22, 2009

-By Katy Bachman <mailto:kbachman at mac.com>


Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps has been 
designated by President Barack Obama to serve as acting FCC Chair.

The interim appointment, announced Thursday (Jan. 22) follows the Jan. 
20 resignation of Republican Kevin Martin.

"I thank President Obama for his confidence in me and for this 
opportunity to serve. I know that I have a truly gifted and terrific 
team to work with. I pledge every effort I am capable of to help steer 
the Commission through its current transition to new leadership," Copps 
said in a statement.

Copps is expected to serve until President Obama nominates Julius 
Genachowski, his campaign's technology adviser, to the post. So far, 
there is no word on when that official appointment will be made.

In the interim the three FCC Commissioners are Democrats Copps and 
Jonathan Adelstein, and Republican Robert McDowell. President Obama also 
needs to find a replacement for former Commissioner, Republican Deborah 
Taylor Tate, who resigned at the end of the year.
___________________________________________________

* * * * * * *
 
June 2, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor


  The Price of Free Airwaves

By MICHAEL J. COPPS

Washington

AS a member of the Federal Communications Commission, I often hear how 
fed up Americans are with the news media. Too much “if it bleeds it 
leads” on the evening news and not enough real coverage of local issues. 
Too little high-quality entertainment and too many people eating bugs.

It doesn’t have to be this way. America lets radio and TV broadcasters 
use public airwaves worth more than half a trillion dollars for free. In 
return, we require that broadcasters serve the public interest: devoting 
at least some airtime for worthy programs that inform voters, support 
local arts and culture and educate our children — in other words, that 
aspire to something beyond just minimizing costs and maximizing revenue.

Using the public airwaves is a privilege — a lucrative one — not a 
right, and I fear the F.C.C. has not done enough to stand up for the 
public interest. Our policies should reward broadcasters that honor 
their pledge to serve that interest and penalize those that don’t.

The F.C.C. already has powerful leverage to hold broadcasters to their 
end of the bargain. Every eight years, broadcasters must prove that they 
have served the public interest in order to get license renewal. If they 
can’t, the license goes to someone else who will. It’s a tough but fair 
system — if the commission does its job.

The problem is that, under pressure from media conglomerates, previous 
commissions have eviscerated the renewal process. Now we have what big 
broadcasters lovingly call “postcard renewal” — the agency typically 
rubber-stamps an application without any substantive review. Denials on 
public interest grounds are extraordinarily rare.

Just recently, the F.C.C. made news because it fined Univision, the 
Spanish-language broadcaster, a record-breaking $24 million. Univision 
claimed that its stations offered three hours of children’s educational 
programming per week — one of the few public interest rules still on the 
books — in part by showing a soap opera involving 11-year-old twins.

That was the right decision. But, viewed closely, it also illustrates 
just how slipshod our renewal process has become.

The fine was not levied at the ordinary time. In fact, the license term 
for one of the two stations initially at issue had expired 18 months 
earlier. This is typical — applications opposed by watchdog groups often 
languish for years while the broadcaster is permitted to continue 
business as usual. Then infractions are commonly disposed of with a 
small fine.

The commission paid attention to the Univision complaint because the 
station was part of a chain of 114 TV and radio stations being 
transferred from a public corporation to private equity firms. Without 
that, it is unclear when, if ever, the violations would have been acted 
upon. This even though scholars believe that one-fifth of what is billed 
as children’s programming has “little or no educational value” and only 
one-third can be called “highly educational.” Our children deserve better.

It wasn’t always like this. Before the deregulatory mania in the 1980s — 
when an F.C.C. chairman described television as a “toaster with 
pictures” — the commission gave license renewals a hard look every three 
years, with specific criteria for making a public interest finding. 
Indeed, broadcasters’ respect for the renewal process encouraged them to 
pay for hard-hitting news operations. That was then.

Nowadays, a lot of people claim that because of the Internet, 
traditional broadcast outlets are an endangered species and there’s no 
point in worrying about them. That’s a mistake.

First, broadcast licenses continue to be very valuable. Univision’s 
assets — many in small markets — were sold for more than $12 billion. A 
single station in Sacramento, owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, went for 
$285 million in 2004. A station in a megamarket like New York or Los 
Angeles could easily fetch half a billion dollars or more.

Second, broadcast outlets are still primary, critical sources of 
information for the American public. Nearly 60 percent of adults watch 
local TV news each day — it remains the nation’s most popular 
information source. And so it’s imperative that broadcasters continue to 
provide high-quality coverage of local and national issues.

But ensuring they do so means putting teeth back into the renewal 
process. To begin with, shorten the license term. Eight years is too 
long to go without an accounting — we ought to return to the three-year 
model.

Let’s also actually review a station’s record before renewing its 
license. Here are just some of the criteria for renewal the F.C.C. 
considered in the 1990s but never put into place:

•

Did the station show programs on local civic affairs (apart from the 
nightly news), or set aside airtime for local community groups?

•

Did it broadcast political conventions, and local as well as national 
candidate debates? Did it devote at least five minutes each night to 
covering politics in the month before an election?

•

In an era when owners may live thousands of miles from their stations, 
have they met with local community leaders and the public to receive 
feedback?

•

Is the station’s so-called children’s programming actually, in the view 
of experts, educational?

All of this information ought to be available on the Web so people can 
see how their airwaves are being used.

These issues are even more pressing today: broadcasters are making the 
transition to digital technology that permits them to send several 
television and radio channels into our homes instead of the single 
channel they’ve had up to now. The F.C.C.’s next step after reforming 
the licensing process should be to address how this new digital capacity 
can increase local programs and also improve the generally shoddy 
coverage of minority and other underserved communities. New benefits for 
broadcasters should translate into public benefits, too.

If you need convincing that something needs to be done, consider that 
only about 8 percent of local TV newscasts in the month before the last 
presidential election contained any coverage whatsoever of local races, 
including those for the House of Representatives.

This low number is just one example of how poorly stations are serving 
their viewers. Do stations that make so much money using the public 
airwaves, but so plainly fail to educate viewers on the issues facing 
them, really deserve to have their renewals rubber-stamped?

Michael J. Copps is a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission.

Copyright 2007 
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New 
York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>


-- 
Sean McLaughlin
Executive Director
Access Humboldt
P.O. Box 157, Eureka, CA 95502
tel: 707-476-1798
dir: 707-476-2873
fax: 707-476-1702
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e: sean at accesshumboldt.net
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"Local Voices Through Community Media"



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