Comcast-NBCU Is Bad For Broadcasting

If some of these companies have to go bankrupt, that's fine with me. Somebody else will buy it at a better price and do a better job.

In defending this and other ownership restrictions on legacy media, aren't you forgetting about the Internet? These local newspapers are up against a slew of local online media options. ESPN, for instance, is coming in with local sports sites that may siphon off sports readers and the revenue attached to them. It's very competitive out there.

Newspaper publishing is a mature business. It is not a dying business. I don't see any reason to take away important protections against the excessive concentration of control in order to help out newspapers. They have to figure out how to monetize audiences on the Internet just as everybody else does.

What about the duopoly rules? Because of the loopholes, we have duopolies everywhere now -- big markets and small markets. Isn't it time to just get rid of the rules?

I certainly agree that the FCC staff has allowed widespread noncompliance to the duopoly rules, but to us the solution is to enforce those rules more thoroughly rather than abandon them. My friend Angela Campbell [of Georgetown Law School's Institute for Public Representation] has taken on shared services agreements in Honolulu. We certainly intend to call on the FCC to make adjustments in how the duopoly rules are enforced as part of its ownership review next year.

Why would you want to enforce the rule and prevent consolidation of station in small markets in light of the very real decline in television station revenue? Some markets may not be able to support more than one or two full-service TV stations.

Well, first of all, we don't know how much of the current problems facing broadcasters is cyclical and how much is secular. Historically, the advertising markets are more adversely affected by recessions than other lines of business. We had downturns in the early 1990s and broadcasting came back. I have no doubt that because of the Internet, the advertising revenues that TV stations have will not return to their prerecession levels, but they may very well go back close to them.

Shouldn't you be sure about that before you advocate for rules that could drive some stations out of business?

I certainly don't feel like making the public suffer with lost diversity and broad services on the basis of a set of assumptions that the world is coming to an end when there's no evidence that the world is coming to an end.

At the FTC workshop, what was your remedy for fixing what ails journalism?

I discussed the fact that the First Amendment requires governments to create a platform for civic discourse and debate and public expression of artistic, social and political ideas. I said, given that context, the FTC -- and presumably other agencies as well -- should be taking steps to create opportunities for new journalistic ventures to take place. It's important to have government subsidies for the creation of new media models and new forms of journalism.

Do you mean direct subsidies from the government?

Direct subsidies from the government to incubate startups and to provide assistance where the marketplace is not providing adequate sources of news and information.

Do you mean literally in places where, for instance, you determine that there is inadequate local news?

For nonprofits, it could be either a corporation for public media rather than now a Corporation for Public Broadcasting or it could be a grant mechanism like the NEA or the NEH.

For for-profits, I support cooperative ventures to create new systems of journalism that might be made available on a sharing basis somewhat along the lines of what GlobalPost is trying to do. I'm convinced that coming out of the wreckage of the recession, we're going to see new innovative ways of creating journalism, and this will apply to broadcasting as well as to other platforms.

What do you make of the plan floated by FCC broadband czar Blair Levin to reallocate the broadcast spectrum to wireless broadband access?

We are very skeptical about Blair's proposals to reshape the broadcasters' spectrum.

Why is that?

I am alterably opposed. While I don't agree with people like [Association of Maximum Service Television President] David Donovan that broadcasters are providing so much public service that that's a reason to leave them where they are, I do believe that the existing spectrum allocation system provides opportunity for new uses of spectrum through unlicensed mechanisms like the TV white spaces plan, which the FCC has adopted. I favor unlicensed spectrum for new broadband platforms rather than auctioning off the spectrum to the existing wireless companies.

The broadcasters will say allowing unlicensed users into the band will degrade the band by causing interference and some in government will say it will devalue the band for later auctioning.