Copps Still Hopes FCC, Industry Will Engage on Broadcast Licensing

"I will continue to try to engage my colleagues” on the subject, said Copps, who now seeks a four-year broadcast license term. “We haven’t had much success with this since I've been there in 2000, with the first two commissions I dealt with. I am more optimistic about the potential of this commission. But to be perfectly frank, I would have to say that it’s mostly potential thus far, and I continue to believe that by this time, almost two years into a new commission, we should have made at least a down payment on media reform and done some of these things on licensing. And I intend to push this very hard during the remainder of my tenure.” His term ended June 30, but he is allowed to serve until the first session of the 112th Congress adjourns in 2011. Copps might not be reappointed.

The current license term of “eight years is too long to go without having the benefit of some kind of public benefit test ... it’s not too much to ask,” Copps said. Given proposals to reallocate TV spectrum for wireless broadband, he thinks broadcasters “would be interested in trying to maximize their position or strengthen the position they have, and one way to do that” is to make better use of the digital spectrum from last year’s DTV transition, Copps said. “Had they heeded that advice and really put on some public interest programming and diversity, I don’t think anybody would have gotten within 500 miles” of the current proposals, he added. “It seems to me now that they're under quite a lot of pressure” and “ought to be willing to talk to people who are friendly with broadcasting,” Copps said. “I've been willing to do that a long time, but I think other counsels have prevailed.” There “are a lot of small and independent broadcasters, people who have had it in the family for years, that strive to serve the public interest,” he said: “But with the consolidation” of recent years, “that is not always the mantra of management these days, which is why I think we should go back to having some guidelines."

The public value test includes a “meaningful commitment” to news and public affairs shows that would be “quantifiable and not involve issues of content interference,” Copps said at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York (http://xrl.us/bh96zd). The enhanced disclosure proceeding before the commission for two years, which would put public inspection files online, may need some minor “reworking” and could be completed in three months, he said. A commission spokeswoman declined to comment on Copps’ proposal.

On more disclosure of funding for political ads, with about $3 billion spent in the run up to the Nov. 2 midterm elections, “I think we need to figure real fast whether we have the authority to do something, and I have urged that we do that” at the FCC, he told us. “I certainly would hope we have that authority” and if agency staffers “can make a convincing argument that we don’t, then we should go about getting that,” he said. “This is not at all partisan.” In his speech, he sought “community discovery” where stations ask their audience for feedback, more local and independent programming and a public safety plan in place at every station, in case of disaster.

Some of Copps’ plan would be a return to the past, before the industry was deregulated in the 1980s, and other parts could violate the First Amendment, said broadcast lawyers who reviewed his proposal. The NAB is happy Copps sees broadcasting’s value, but disagrees with some of his proposals, a spokesman said. “Radio and TV stations have cycled out of the worst recession in 50 years and are poised to provide consumers with a robust digital future on mobile devices. Much of that programming will be free and local, which ought to count for something. Rolling back license renewal terms to a nearly pre-Internet era and adding new regulatory burdens would only create uncertainty."

"I don’t think across-the-board, one-size-fits-all standards will get industry buy-in,” said lawyer David Oxenford of Davis Wright. “It would have to be very broad categories of ways of demonstrating the public interest to cover the myriad ways that broadcasters across the country” do that, he said. “There has been engagement at various times in the past between broadcast groups and the FCC,” such as several years ago during the localism proceeding, he said. Harry Cole of Fletcher Heald said he’s “very skeptical” about Copps’s suggestions. “As I see them, they're just another in a series of efforts -- dating back to the earliest days of broadcast regulation -- aimed at insinuating the commission into the business of content control, notwithstanding the First Amendment and Section 326” of the Communications Act, he said: That section bars the FCC from depriving broadcasters of free speech.

"Commissioner Copps’ idea will only lead to easy circumventions and more dominance of information dissemination than we have today, both of which are the opposite of what he is trying to” do, said Peter Tannenwald, also of Fletcher Heald. “He cannot achieve his goal in a country that has freedom of speech, a large number of outlets and easy tuning, which has accelerated specialization and allows the public to change stations or channels with a button push.” Trying to require all stations to air news will accelerate a growing trend, in which a few stations with the biggest newsrooms serve as news operations for smaller stations in their market, Tannenwald said. “The largest newsrooms then get access to multiple outlets, which keeps static the number of diverse news voices in the market or even reduces news voices as smaller stations give up trying to compete where they can’t win.”