The opportunity for digital broadcasting brings with it a corresponding imperative for affirmation of the public interest obligations of those who are its beneficiaries. Accordingly, the Advisory Committee's Report ("Report") contains a number of key recommendations that I fully support. The Report contains other recommendations, however, to which I respectfully must dissent.
I endorse and, in fact, played a role in framing the Report's recommendation for "Disclosure of Public Interest Activities By Broadcasters." Enhanced disclosure will facilitate public review of each station's community service and serve as a self-audit for the broadcast industry. The industry has an enviable record of public service; it should not be reluctant to disclose it.
I also support the creation of a broadcast industry voluntary code of good practices prepared and administered by the broadcast industry. The broadcast industry is imbued with a public trust, and the implementation of a code of good practices will create a forum for public debate on evolving national and local standards for broadcast service. Self-regulation, if responsibly administered and enforced, will avert First Amendment tensions associated with government regulation and provide an impetus for continuing reassessment by the industry of its public interest stewardship.
Given the conspicuous role television plays in the nation's political discourse, I endorse Core Recommendation No. 6(b) that television stations voluntarily provide five minutes of time for appearances by candidates each evening during the 30-day period before an election from 5:00PM to 11:35PM (or the appropriate equivalent in non-eastern time zones). What is so compelling about the latter is that it offers a broadcaster flexibility and creativity, while advancing in a meaningful way the interests of a more fully informed electorate. This proposal would also serve to further the substantive and documented offerings already made by broadcasters in the form of political debates, campaign issue reports, candidate profiles, etc.
I am troubled, on the other hand, by other aspects of Section 6, notably the proposals regarding so-called "free air time" and the establishment of a "broadcast bank for airtime" to be controlled by political parties. Such approaches, while well intended, may very well exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the abuses that exist within the current political campaign system.
I firmly endorse those portions of the Report addressed to Improving Education Through Digital Broadcasting, which in many ways could be one of the most far-reaching and beneficial products of the work of the Committee; Disaster Warnings In The Digital Age; Disability Access To Digital Programming; and Diversity In Broadcasting.
Conversely, I am not able to support Core Recommendation No. 3 for government mandated minimum public interest standards. "One size fits all" government mandated standards would not advance the public interest. Intrusive, content-based regulation that would likely flow from government mandated standards would, on the other hand, impede experimentation and the development of digital television and frustrate attainment of the very goals the Committee envisions for this exciting new service.
In many ways, the 10th and concluding section, New Approaches to Public Interest Obligations In The New Television Environment, presents the greatest difficulty for me. The Report in this section, as well as in the section related to Multiplexing, would legitimatize the "pay or play" concept. "Pay or play" is repugnant to the underlying principles on which the nation's over-the-air broadcast service is based. The potential benefits that might come from a "pay or play" scheme could never achieve the sum of the public service contributions currently made by the broadcast industry.
Broadcasters do not ask to be relieved of their public interest activities or obligations. The great and exciting opportunity presented by digital technology, as noted at the outset, necessitates a corresponding affirmation of those responsibilities. However, certain sections of the final report, as I have tried to articulate, go far beyond these bounds into a new regulatory environment that threatens to undermine the special bonds that local broadcasters currently enjoy with their respective communities of interest and to retard the full potential that digital offers our medium and those we serve.
I have every confidence digital broadcasters will honor their public service responsibilities, and it is my hope that the work of this Committee will serve to facilitate continuing and constructive public and industry dialogue on the important issues contained in the Committee's Report.