Ferree: Ownership Deregulation Not Enough

Former Federal Communications Commission Media Bureau Chief Ken Ferree is now telling the FCC that it needs to do more than just relax broadcast ownership rules. "The FCC should abolish archaic broadcast speech restrictions so that broadcasters can compete with new media platforms that enjoy full First Amendment protection," he said. "Even more dramatically, Congress could recognize that broadcasters hold a property interest in their licenses and allow them to use their assigned spectrum in the most efficient manner as determined by free people interacting in free markets — or to trade or sell it to those who world." Now a senior Fellow at conservative think tank Progress and Freedom Foundation, Ferree portrayed broadcasting as being badly in need of help, as an "increasingly marginal player in the media world" that is attracting little interest from the financial community. How many stations one can own is no longer the question, he said. The question is "how will anyone sustain audiences substantial enough to pay for serious programming?"