90 years later, the broadcast public interest standard remains ill-defined

The public interest standard has governed broadcast radio and television since Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927. However, decades of successive court cases and updated telecommunications laws have done little to clarify what falls into the public interest. The Radio Act gave local broadcasters monopolies over specific channels of electromagnetic spectrum to reduce interference on public airwaves. In exchange for control over a limited resource, the text of the law instructs broadcasters to operate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity”. A recently released paper by Center for Technology Innovation Nonresident Senior Fellow Stuart N. Brotman outlines the legislative, judicial, and regulatory history of this public interest standard and offers some recommendations for how it might be reformed.