Another $100 billion gift to Broadcasters from Uncle Sam

[SOURCE: Truth, Justice, and Telecom Policy, AUTHOR: J.H. Snider]
[Commentary] Today, it's practically impossible to find a serious telecom analyst who believes that a generation from now conventional over-the-air broadcasting-digital or not-will be a significant media business in the United States. The expectation is that consumers will want significantly more choice in terms of programming options and convenience-something which only the Internet can efficiently deliver. Broadcast industry leaders, of course, beg to differ. With a level playing field and "minor" enhancements to their licenses, they claim that the ad-supported, terrestrial, over-the-air broadcasting industry will continue to thrive-perhaps for eternity. But do their actions match their rhetoric? No where do we get a better sense of the discrepancy than in the current FCC Digital Television Distributed Transmission System (DTS) rulemaking, with comments due on February 6, 2006. In this rulemaking, derived from another rulemaking about two years ago, we see a brilliant continuation of the broadcast industry's below-the-public radar, one-step-at-a-time strategy of quietly exiting the broadcasting business in the name of preserving it while walking off with a windfall of tens of billions of dollars worth of new spectrum rights.
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