In trying to bend laws and regulations their way, TV broadcasters and their Washington representatives often find themselves opposed by self-appointed advocates of the public interest who have very definite ideas of how broadcasting and other media should be handled by the government.

Among them is Free Press, an eight-year-old organization whose long list of benefactors suggests that it's here to stay — and be heard.

As executive director, Josh Silver heads its staff of 30 and serves as principal spokesman.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, Silver says he recognizes the trouble that broadcasting and newspaper publishing is in, but he doesn't see media consolidation as the way out. A better approach, he says, is direct government subsidies for noncommercial media and indirect subsidies for commercial media.

He also sides with those who believe that TV stations ought to give back some of their spectrum so that it can be put to better use for broadband access.

As for Comcast's proposed takeover of NBCU, he says, don't even think about it.

An edited transcript:

So what's your problem with Comcast-NBCU?

Comcast is the largest residential cable provider, and then you add to its arsenal one of the largest media-producing companies in the country. It's simply too much power in the hands of one company; too much power to manipulate content costs with other video distributers; and it's too much power in the hands of a company that is known as a price gouger.

Comcast has raised its rates by nearly 50% in some markets over the past five years and its customer service record is among the worst in the industry. They have a history of blocking television ads that are critical of their political allies. They are likely to put NBC content that you can currently watch on Hulu behind a pay wall.

They are the only company that's been officially sanctioned for illegally blocking Web traffic. They played dirty. They were caught red-handed paying for seat fillers at an FCC hearing up in Boston. They already make plenty of money. They don't need this deal to be successful. Finally, we're very worried that this deal would set off a wave of other mergers where we'll see other consolidation of ownership and power across the industry.

As you know, Comcast has a tremendous lobby and a lot of influence in Washington. Assuming you can't stop the deal, what conditions would you like to see put on it?

I don't want to go there because my job is to stop this deal. There is no version of this merger that is going to work for the U.S. public. We need to stop this deal. There's no other way to protect the public interest.

Let's talk about broadcasting. Some FCC policymakers and some in the wireless industry believe the FCC should take away all or some of the broadcast spectrum and make it available for wireless broadband access. What do you think?

We absolutely agree. We expect that in four to six years we're going to see more of the television spectrum freed up. We think that absolutely needs to be offered up, both for innovative products and to create a viable wireless ISP competitor.

You seem pretty certain that it's going to happen. The broadcasters are strongly resisting giving up any of their spectrum.

Yes, they're resisting it, but the tides are inevitable. We're going to see spectrum being reallocated. With digital convergence, television simply can't make a sufficient case for why they deserve to keep everything they have been sitting on for so many years.

In your National Broadband Plan filing, you say broadband should be considered "essential infrastructure." Why isn't broadcasting "essential infrastructure?"

Well, we believe we can have our cake and eat it too. We believe that television can have sufficient broadcast spectrum to do what they need to do digitally and relinquish the spectrum that they don't actually need. Secondly, let's be frank. Commercial television news and commercial radio news is becoming an oxymoron.

Now there are notable exceptions, but, for the most part, radio and television news is sports, weather, crime, celebrity. It's little-to-no investigative, hard-hitting, enterprise journalism. So let's not be delusional and pretend that the commercial sector is providing the information and the quality educational and cultural fare that this democracy requires.

They deserve to be able to do their business and there is a strong future for commercial media in this country, but we also have to look at the vital importance of the Web as a new delivery mechanism that could break open access and distribution, that can make every website a television or radio network. Also, we have to look at the value of noncommercial media, of public broadcasting, as an alternative to | More …