PIAC Legacy Project: Minimum Public Interest Requirements

Recommendation 3: Minimum Public Interest Requirements

Recommendation:
The FCC should adopt a set of minimum public interest requirements for digital television broadcasters.

The Advisory Committee believes that having the broadcast industry adopt a strong set of voluntary standards of conduct, created and administered by the National Association of Broadcasters, would be a highly desirable step toward creating a digital world meeting the needs and interests of the American public. The Advisory Committee nevertheless recognizes an additional reality: not all broadcasters will subscribe to voluntary guidelines. Importantly, a large number of broadcast stations—perhaps as many as 400—are not members of the NAB and thus would not be affected by an industry-drafted and administered code.

Therefore, despite the Committee’s stated preferences for voluntary self-regulation and maximum broadcaster flexibility, the Advisory Committee recommends that the FCC adopt a set of mandatory minimum public interest requirements for digital broadcasters. These minimum standards should be drafted in a way that would not impose an undue burden on digital broadcast stations, and should apply to areas generally accepted as important universal responsibilities for broadcasters—as well as for cable and satellite providers. Any set of minimum standards should be drafted by the FCC in close conjunction with broadcasters and representatives of the public, and phased in over several years beginning with stations’ trans- mission of digital signals.

We have a broad consensus on the Advisory Committee that there should be minimum standards. However, our Advisory Committee is not unanimous in its recommendation about what those standards should be, or what form they should take. Some of the disagreements in this regard, including whether areas like free political time should be included in minimum standards, are expressed in the individual views of Advisory Committee members found in Section IV in this report. More generally, we have sharply different views about the specificity of minimum standards. Many of our committee members endorse the idea of detailed standards with defined numerical guidelines of performance, believing that the only way to make standards work and to evaluate whether stations meet them is to make the standards specific. However, others, including many broadcasters on the panel who endorse the concept of minimum standards, object vociferously to that idea, believing that detailed standards with numerical quotas reflect an outdated model of regulation, and simply do not fit the diverse character of digital television stations around the country.

After much discussion, and having reviewed the product of a working group of the Advisory Committee led by James. F. Goodmon of Capitol Broadcasting, the Committee recommends the following categories for minimum standards for digital broadcasters:(3)

1. Community Outreach. Digital stations should be required to develop a method for determining or “ascertaining” a community’s needs and interests. This process of reaching out and involving the community should serve as the station’s road map for addressing these needs through news, public affairs, children’s and other local programming, and public service announcements. Further public input should be invited on a regular basis through regular postal and electronic mail services. The call for requests for public input should be closed captioned. The stations should regularly report during the year to the public on their efforts.
2. Accountability. Whatever the mandatory minimums, stations should report quarterly to the public on their public interest efforts, as outlined in recommendation 1, above.
3. Public Service Announcements. A minimum commitment to public service an- nouncements should be required of digital television broadcasters, with at least equal emphasis placed on locally produced PSAs addressing a community’s local needs. PSAs should run in all day parts including in primetime and at other times of peak viewing.
4. Public Affairs Programming. A minimum commitment to public affairs program- ming should be required of digital television broadcasters, again with some emphasis on local issues and needs. Such programming should air in visible time periods during the day and evening. Public affairs programming can occur within or outside regularly scheduled newscasts, but is not defined as coverage of news itself.
5. Closed Captioning. A digital broadcast station should provide closed captioning of PSAs, public affairs programming, and political programming. Captioning in these areas should be phased in over the first 4 years of a station’s digital broadcasts, where doing so would not impose an undue burden, but should be completed no later than the FCC-imposed deadline of 2006 for captioning most programming.

MUST CARRY

Our recommendation for mandatory minimum standards stands alone. But it also expresses a recognition that in the digital era it is in the public interest for television broadcasting, which meets significant public interest obligations, to reach all American homes as soon as possible. To “preserv[e] the benefits of free, over-the-air broadcast television”(4) in a digital world, the Advisory Committee recommends that appropriate governmental authorities adopt ways, including digital “must carry” by cable operators, to expedite the widespread availability of digital broadcast television to the public. Congress has required cable operators to carry broadcasters’ digital signals. In addition, the intent of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was to expedite the advance of digital broadcasting.(5) If it is in the public interest to have digital television broadcasting available as soon as possible to the largest number of Americans, policies that encourage that availability should themselves be encouraged, in a manner that does not disadvantage smaller broadcasters as compared to larger broadcasters, and that recognizes the important role of public broadcasting. The Advisory Committee recognizes that implementation of digital “must carry” poses many difficult questions, including technological ones, which the FCC is exploring in an ongoing rulemaking.

Additional Links

Statement of Charles Benton, Frank M. Blythe, Peggy Charren, Frank H. Cruz, Richard Masur, Newton N. Minow, Jose Luis Ruiz, Shelby Schuck Scott, Gigi B. Sohn, Karen Peltz Strauss, and James Yee; Cass R. Sunstein and Robert D. Glaser join in Part I only
Statement of James F. Goodmon Supporting Minimum Standards for Digital Television Broadcasters including the report of the Working Group on Minimum Public Interest Standards with attachment.

Endnotes

3) In addition to the following categories, the Advisory Committee assumes that the Children’s Television Act will apply to digital broadcasting as it does to analog.

4) Turner Broad. Sys. Inc. v. FCC, 117 S. Ct. 1174, 1186 (1997).

5) See e.g., 47 U. S. C. §336(a)(1) (limiting “the initial eligibility for [advanced television service] licenses to persons that . . . are licensed to operate a television broadcast station or hold a permit to construct such a station”).

On to Recommendation 4