As mentioned last week, in a new series of essays, PFF scholars will be examining proposals that would have the government play a greater role in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public interest” content. With many traditional media operators struggling, and questions being raised about how journalism in particular will be supported in the future, Washington policymakers are currently considering what role government can and should play in helping media providers reinvent themselves in the face of tumultuous technological change wrought by the Digital Revolution. We will be releasing 6 or 7 essays on this topic leading up to our big filing in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding (deadline is May 7th). And here’s a podcast Berin Szoka and I did providing an overview of the series.
In the first installment of the series, Berin and I critiqued an old idea that’s suddenly gained new currency: taxing media devices or distribution systems to fund media content. In the second installment, “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 2: Broadcast Spectrum Taxes to Subsidize Public Media,” I discuss proposals to impose a tax on broadcast spectrum licenses to funnel money to public media projects or other “public interest” content or objectives. Such a tax would be fundamentally unfair to broadcasters, who are struggling for their very survival in the midst of unprecedented marketplace turmoil. Moreover, such a tax is unnecessary in light of the many other sources of “public interest” programming available today. Finally, even if the government creates or subsidizes wonderful, civic- and culturally-enriching content, there’s no way to force people to consume it. Nor should government force such media choices upon the public. There’s no good reason for government to be socially-engineering media choices through taxes.
I’ve attached the entire essay down below.
Continue reading →
Note: Here’s a second post I just put live at DrewClark.com. It refers to an upcoming conference, on Friday, October 3, sponsored by the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law. It will be held at 8:30 a.m. at the National Press Club. Registration details are below.
In the United States, the regulation of broadcast radio and television has always been done under a different standard than the regulation of the print medium.
As Secretary of Commerce in the administration of President Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover declared: “The ether is a public medium, and its use must be for a public benefit,” he said at the Fourth National Radio Conference, in 1925. “The dominant element for consideration in the radio field is, and always will be, the great body of the listening public, millions in number, country-wide in distribution.”
When Congress created the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, it decreed that broadcasting was to serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity,” and this standard was re-affirmed in the Communications Act of 1934. Several Supreme Court decisions — albeit decisions that have been much criticized — affirmed that broadcasting could and should be treated differently than the traditional “press.”
This differential treatment for broadcasting — versus the print medium, and also cable television — was underscored by the decisions in
Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969), which upheld the “Fairness Doctrine,” and also FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978), which upheld indecency rules for over-the-air broadcast television. The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to grant reply time to those who said their views were criticized.
Continue reading →
Note: Here’s a post I just put live at DrewClark.com. It refers to an upcoming conference that might be of interest to Tech Liberation readers. Make sure to follow the link to the bottom of the post for registration information for this FREE conference, to be held tomorrow, Friday, October 3, at 8:30 a.m.
If all goes according to plan, on February 17, 2009, television broadcasters will power down their analog transmitters. They will be broadcasting their signal only digitally.
After more than 20 years in the long transition to digital television, this might be considered progress. Now, millions of Americans are collecting vouchers from the Commerce Department to subsidize their purchase of converter boxes. These are the electronic devices that take the digital signals — and convert them back to analog — so that viewers without high-definition televisions can watch broadcast TV on their old sets.
What about the bigger questions? Is there any benefit to the public, or to consumers, from the transition to digital television? What about the vaunted visions of hundreds of broadcast channels, through multi-casting? What would be the new public-interest obligations, if any, of broadcasters? This question has definitely not been resolved.
Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.