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January 03, 2008

Fuzzy Deans

On December 22, seven deans of prestigious university journalism programs signed an op-ed piece in the New York Times titled “A License for Local Reporting” that was fuzzy in its writing and thinking. Their hearts are in the right place, but their heads weren’t.

I read the piece several times, and here are some of the main points I think the deans were making:

1. That local television and radio stations should (my emphasis) “be doing their own news gathering, rather than merely serving as support systems for news gathering by newspapers.”
2. That the F.C.C. “ought to treat a broadcast licensee’s commitment of resources to original local reporting on public affairs as a key factor…” when renewing a station’s license and that “Companies should be required to make a persuasive case that they will increase their commitment to local reporting…”
3. That broadcast license renewal is too easy and that “…the pretense that there is a connection between the grant of a broadcast license and a promise to report on one’s community is all but gone.”

As Jeff Jarvis wrote in his Buzz Machine blog, “The deans sound like union organizers trying to protect headcount.”

But let’s go deeper and look at the basic assumption for the government regulating broadcasting. In 1927 Congress created The Federal Radio Commission, the predecessor to the F.C.C., to regulate radio "as the public convenience, interest, or necessity requires" and to bring order to the chaos of overlapping radio frequency usage. The assumption at the time was that the electromagnetic spectrum, which included frequencies used at no cost by radio stations, was a common asset belonging to the public and, therefore, should be used to benefit the public in some way.

Government regulations worked as long as stations had to demonstrate how they were assessing community needs and serving those needs in order to renew their licenses. But the F.C.C. changed those regulations in 1996 after intense lobbying by broadcasters and license renewals became virtually automatic. Broadcasting went from being a public trust to a private trust to benefit station owners, not the community.

And now, the F.C.C. is going to auction off a big piece of the electromagnetic spectrum which will become available when TV stations go all digital, HDTV in 2009. Don’t ask me how it works, because it’s too complicated for me to understand. But I do know that an auction will take place and that Google is considering bidding at a price that might be around $7 billion.

But if the electromagnetic spectrum is a community asset – an asset that the public, in a sense, owns – then how can the government sell it (or, rather, sell access to it) if we own it? If the government sells this community property for $7 billion, will I get my $20 share? Of course not, but I should get something that benefits me. Therefore, I think if the government is going to sell access to the electromagnetic spectrum to Google, then it ought to require that Google do something that benefits the entire community and has consequences built in if Google doesn’t do it (unlike the current no-consequences system for broadcasters).

The rumor is that Google wants the electromagnetic spectrum to create a nationwide wireless network – a reliable network from which Google cell phones could access the Internet free. Such a system would essentially put Verizon and ATT Wireless out of business, a situation that most citizens, especially me, would be thrilled about. Free cell phone service would be a terrific community service – a much better community service than I’m getting from my commercial radio and television stations.

The other assumption upon which the deans base their op-ed column is that local radio and television stations “should be doing their own news gathering.” In other words, that serving “the public convenience, interest, or necessity” means doing their own, original news gathering and that the news gathering we’ll get from local radio and television stations will give us news that “the American system needs to function at its best.” Not a good assumption, to say the least.

So here’s the issue: The public owns the electromagnetic spectrum; therefore, whoever uses the spectrum for free must give the public something useful in return. The government, with the help of journalism academics, I guess, will decide what is useful, what is in the “public convenience, interest, or necessity.” The deans obviously think more jobs in gathering local news are what are useful. But broadcasters are now faced with competition that in 1927 and 1996 didn’t exist – the Internet – and its usage is virtually free, and those who use it don’t have to give the public something useful in return because the F.C.C. doesn’t regulate it.

It’s not a situation in which merely the rules have changed; it’s an entirely new game – a new set of rules, new players, new teams, and a new playing field – and the deans don’t seem to understand it’s a new game and they attempted to apply the old rules to the new game. It doesn’t work that way.

In the new game, it doesn’t make any sense to require by regulatory fiat that broadcasters must hire more local news reporters or program more local news when doing news is not what their mediums do best. As I wrote in my November 20 blog post, “Wrong, But Right,” “I don't care who owns a radio or television station, which is what the FCC regulates, as long as the stations serve the public good, convenience, and necessity. Public service should be the issue, not ownership...” This seems to be the position that the deans take, which I, obviously, agree with.

However, the problem is defining public service (which isn’t just news gathering) and then putting a system in place that has consequences for not providing the defined public service. The F.C.C. has failed on both counts. But the F.C.C. has recognized that broadcasters are facing new competition and, therefore, must consider new business models to survive. So let’s hope the F.C.C. makes the right decision when it auctions off our electromagnetic spectrum and makes whoever buys the right to use it give me free cell phone service and mobile access to the Internet – what a public service.

Posted by Charles Warner at January 3, 2008 09:04 PM

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