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Airwaves belong to us all

By MICHAEL J. COPPS Special to the Times
Published April 20, 2007

Graduating from Northeast High School in St. Petersburg, I remember a city with a vibrant media: locally originated programs, hometown talent, and good coverage of public issues and political campaigns. On April 30, I will be coming back to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, trying to measure how much of that vibrancy remains. I want to know whether the people of this great area believe that their media are serving them in the way they deserve.

It's important to me because I serve as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, and the FCC will soon be deciding whether to allow fewer media giants to buy up still more local broadcasters and other media outlets.

All five members of the FCC will be in Tampa on Monday, April 30, at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, beginning at 4 p.m. and extending into late evening, to hear whether you think this is a good idea. Please come tell us what you think. When it comes to the fate of the people's airwaves - your airwaves - no voices should be as important as yours.

Three years ago, a majority at the FCC voted - over the strong objections of my colleague Jonathan Adelstein and me - to scrap many of the ownership limits. They did so without seeking the input of the American people. Those flawed rules would have allowed a single corporation to own in some markets up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the local newspaper (a monopoly in most towns), as well as the cable system and Internet service provider. Thankfully, that indefensible decision stirred up a hornet's nest of public outrage.

Three-million citizens contacted the FCC to express their opposition. They wrote out of a strong belief that we desperately need rules to prevent one-size-fits-all news from becoming the acceptable standard in our communities and to replace those awful homogenized national playlists from completely displacing local musicians and other creative artists. Congress went on record with its concerns, too. And then a federal court found the rules both substantively and procedurally flawed and sent them back to us to rework. It was good news that citizen action actually checked those outrageous rules. But the threat persists.

Last summer, the FCC launched a review that might severely scale back the few remaining media consolidation protections. These rules, among other things, limit a single corporation from dominating local TV and radio markets or from merging a community's TV stations, radio stations and newspapers.

So a new dialogue is underway. But this time, it needs to be much more than an inside-the-Beltway discussion.

Let's remember that American citizens, not TV and radio executives, own the airwaves. We give broadcasters the right to use these airwaves for free. They earn profits (usually very healthy profits) using this public resource in exchange for agreeing to broadcast in the public interest.

We need to know whether the good folks of the town where I once lived feel they are being well-served by the media. Are they getting the diversity of viewpoint they want? Do news programs provide real insight into what's going on in minority communities, or do they present a misleading caricature of Latinos and African-Americans? Is news and entertainment on TV and radio designed to appeal to viewers of all ages, or are broadcasters gearing their programming exclusively to the supposed interests of the prized 18-to-34-year-old demographic?

Even if the future of our media is not your No. 1 issue, it needs to be your No. 2 issue. That's because Americans get their input and develop their views about all the other critical issues of the day - the economy, jobs, peace and war, health care, education - from the media. They learn about them on TV news, hear about them on the radio and read about them in the newspaper. I can't think of any of these issues that wouldn't fare much better in an open, diverse, community-responsive and competitive media environment.

Seventy years ago, Gertrude Stein returned to her hometown (Oakland, Calif.) to find that she could not locate her childhood home. She famously stated, "There is no there there." When our children look one day at the media system we have left them, and take up the reins of self-government, I hope they don't share Stein's chilling conclusion.

So I urge you to attend the FCC hearing. We need your input and the input of as many of our fellow citizens as we can elicit. I believe we have the best chance in our generation to settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes, and to resolve it in favor of airwaves of, by, and for the people of this great country. But it will take a lot of us, working together, to make it happen.

Michael J. Copps is a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC meeting will be at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on April 30 beginning at 4 p.m and extending into late evening.

[Last modified April 20, 2007, 01:01:06]