October 2008

Nearly 75 members of Congress are urging the head of the Federal Communications Commission to delay next week's vote on a proposal to overhaul key pieces of telecommunications regulation, arguing that the matter should get public review. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to significantly reorder the complicated menu of fees that phone companies pay to connect calls with each other's networks. He advocates more uniform, lower rates. The proposed changes are backed by the three largest phone companies, Qwest, Verizon, and AT&T. They argue that existing rules are outdated and based on obsolete regulatory distinctions. But the plan faces opposition from a broad coalition of competing carriers and rural phone companies, which fear it could erode the money they get for completing phone calls to their subscribers. And consumer advocates warn that it could lead to higher phone bills - particularly for rural customers - as phone companies seek to recover lost access charges from other sources.

[Commentary] For most industries, companies have to buy the raw materials from which their finished products are made. One industry has been continually exempt from that law of commerce - broadcasting. For almost 90 years, radio and then TV broadcasters have used the public's airwaves (spectrum) without charge. At one point, they had some obligations to serve the public interest, but most of those were done away with in the great deregulation wave of the 1980s. It's time for a new policy for broadcasters because their world is changing, like it or not. The TV networks are starting to offer full episodes of shows online, so that viewers don't have to watch the television set or tune in to the stations the networks or their affiliates own. Public Knowledge has proposed some approaches, ranging from abandoning the spectrum scarcity argument on which broadcast regulation is based, to forcing broadcasters to choose between paying for spectrum and losing their special protections, or keeping protections like must-carry and give up spectrum. The basic question: Should an industry so dedicated to stopping progress deserve any protections without any accompanying responsibilities? The basic answer: Everything should be on the table for discussion.

Showbiz is bracing for the arrival of a new sheriff in Washington. Because no matter what happens next week on Election Day, one thing is certain: Current Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is out the door. Even if Sen John McCain (R-AZ) wins, Chairman Martin is history, Beltway insiders say. Speculation about post-election appointments for the FCC and other key policy posts reached fever pitch in Washington media circles this week.

[Commentary] The fairness doctrine is still dead, and it probably will stay dead even if Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) becomes president. But there's a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations' programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership. Such threats might not rile up the red-state base the way the fairness doctrine does, in part because it's far from clear that the GOP would be any better.