Admiralty Ballroom
Hilton Crystal City
2399 Jefferson Davis Highway
Arlington, VA
Wednesday, September 9, 1998
MEMBERS PRESENT:
LESLIE MOONVES, Co-Chair
NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN, Co-Chair
CHARLES BENTON FRANK M. BLYTHE
PEGGY CHARREN HAROLD C. CRUMP
FRANK H. CRUZ BARRY DILLER
WILLIAM F. DUHAMEL, Ph.D. JAMES FLETCHER GOODMON
PAUL A. LA CAMERA NEWTON N. MINOW
JOSE LUIS RUIZ SHELBY SCHUCK SCOTT
GIGI B. SOHN KAREN PELTZ STRAUSS
JAMES YEE
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ALSO PRESENT:
KAREN M. EDWARDS, Designed Federal Official
ANNE STAUFFER, Committee Liaison Officer
P R O C E E D I N G S
(8:53 a.m.)
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Ladies and gentlemen, let's
get started if we can. As you can see -- have we got our
mike working? It doesn't sound like it. Can we get our
technical support? There we go, okay.
We have most, but not all, of our members here. We
have a couple who are going to be here, but who are not
here yet. But we have an ample majority, so we'll get
started for what I expect is our penultimate meeting.
The hope basically is that we can go through the
framework that your two Co-Chairs have put together along
with the suggestions and recommendations that are out
there that have been put on the table by other members of
the committee, have full discussion of them, see where we
can reach an overall consensus, see where we have points
of disagreement, move from this meeting then to drafting
the report, including recommendations that we will trade
back and forth, until we can either reach a consensus or
find that we cannot, and then meet again on October 26th
for discussion and presumably acceptance of the report
that we have.
We have reserved a day and a half for that meeting,
October 26th and 27th. If all goes well, we will not use
the day and a half, but what we'd like is to keep that as
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an option and hope you can keep it on your schedules just
in case it takes us more time to work these things through
and redraft perhaps to reach that point. Then we'll go
back to producing a report.
Yes?
MR. RUIZ: In Washington?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: I assume it will be here in
Washington, yes. Now, I do want to say we are here in
beautiful downtown Crystal City, which for many years
probably advertised itself as a place, because of its
tunnels and the like, that you could live and work in
Crystal City and never go outside. I would only say that
if we have real trouble today and we have to have more
meetings, on that basis I hold over your head the threat
that we'll hold them all in Crystal City. So there's a
major incentive to reach agreement quickly.
MR. DUHAMEL: All day the 26th?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes. We start holding out
the day of the 26th and then a half day on the 27th, but
with every hope that we won't have to go to that full
measure of time. So we'll see how it goes.
What I hope we will do today is go through these
various suggestions, recommendations areas, get opinions
and views, and in many of them I hope and think that we
can reach a general consensus. As I said to you before,
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my view of consensus, it doesn't have to be unanimity, but
I hope we can reach a point where the overwhelming weight
of opinion of the committee will agree with what we're
doing and we can maybe tweak some language.
Let me also say that I expect that our report will,
like Supreme Court decisions, have an open opportunity for
concurring and dissenting opinions. In most cases I hope
those will be concurring opinions, where people agree with
the thrust of what we're doing but want to offer
additional expansive views or suggest more specific things
themselves, and we want to leave every opportunity for
that to happen.
But my goal -- and I don't want to speak entirely for
my Co-Chair. Our goal I think is that we can reach
consensus on a core of recommendations that will cut
across all of our lines, and we say that in significant
part because I believe, we believe, that as an advisory
committee without any formal powers, the power that we
have to have an impact on the policy is that of the weight
of our members -- a very impressive group of people,
cutting across a wide range of viewpoints and positions
and perspectives.
The power that we have as a committee is considerably
greater in having resonance out there in the policy
community if we can cut across those lines and reach a
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consensus, particularly since there are large numbers of
people out there who have been saying all along that
there's no way that this group of diverse voices could
reach any consensus on anything. So that's the hope here.
The game plan is that we will start with the Co-
Chairmen's framework of suggestions, go through those
areas one by one. In many cases the proposal that Gigi
Sohn has put on the table parallels those recommendations
in the areas that are considered, so we can have a
discussion of the different perspectives there.
Then we'll turn to the other areas. That includes
some of the questions of how we deal with notification of
disasters, which we had discussed at an earlier meeting,
and we have a suggestion that was put to us by the Federal
Task Force on the notification of disasters. We do not
have a specific proposal down here on the issues of
captioning a video description, but I think we're close to
a consensus on some of the language that Karen had
submitted to us and we need to have further discussion of
that so we can flesh that out and frame it through, and
then the other suggestions that we have.
We have a set of ideas that emerge for each of us to
look at this morning from Jose Luis Ruiz and I would
suggest that we take that up last so that we have time in
the lunch period for everybody to read it so that we can
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know what's there and discuss it.
So that's the game plan and we'll start shortly on
that basis.
Let me turn to Les.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Thank you, Norm.
By and large -- not by and large. I agree with
everything that Norm has just stated. Clearly, the Co-
Chairmen's framework for our recommendations took a lot of
work. There was a lot of effort on the part of a lot of
members of this committee. In terms of recommendations,
and I think we've come a long way towards reaching
consensus on a lot of issues, there is still a lot of work
to be done and I know a lot of discussion that we will
have today.
I think the good news is we have an entire day
to do that. There are a lot of issues we need to get to.
But to reiterate what Norm has said, I think it is almost
essential that we reach agreement on a lot of these
issues. If there is a great deal of dissent or in fact
dissenting opinions and we can't come to a consensus, I
think a lot of the work that we will have done will be in
vain.
I think if we can get a general framework, there
will be plenty of opportunity for other opinions to go
into the document that we put out. But as Norm said, it
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is essential, I think, that we do have an informal
consensus on this.
In terms of -- we have a lot of issues to deal
with. Everybody is going to get an opportunity to discuss
all these issues, but there is a lot of ground to cover
today. So everybody will get a lot of opportunity to
speak. But just please keep it as succinct as possible,
and I think we can get a lot accomplished.
So back to you, Mr. Ornstein.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Does anyone have anything
they want to say right at the outset?
(No response.)
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Okay. It seemed to us that
the best way to handle this was simply to go through these
areas one by one and see where people have problems with
or want to expand upon the recommendations that we put out
here.
Let's start with the question as we have it in
our framework. Clearly, this recommendation flowed from a
lot of our discussion about the conditions under which
additional public interest obligations might be
appropriate for broadcasters as we move into the digital
age. A lot of discussion in our meetings about the
distinction between a world in which we would move from
one analog station broadcasting one signal 24 hours a day
9
to a world in which there would be one digital signal, a
digital station, high definition digital, broadcasting 24
hours a day after we make that transition -- something
that many during and particularly after the debate on the
Telecommunications Act in Congress believed would be the
world that would emerge and was the rationalization for
many of the members, many of the most prominent of the
members, for suggesting that we not auction off the
spectrum, but rather go through this process of lending
the digital spectrum to go through the transition, and
then the theory was that it would be a good deal for the
public because they exchanged one lousy signal for one
fabulous signal.
But we recognize that the Act did not mandate
that possibility and that there are lots of other
possibilities. Now, of course the Act also said that if
the digital spectrum were used by broadcasters for
subscription services for paid purposes, for what were
called ancillary and supplementary uses -- paging, pay per
view, and whatever it might be -- rather than commercial-
driven, free, over the air purposes, that fees would be
assessed, and the Federal Communications Commission is in
the process of assessing those fees.
We in our deliberations, accepting that, also
wanted to make a distinction between one over the air
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commercial-driven channel and multiple channels that were
free, commercial-driven, over the air. I think we came to
an agreement at an earlier point that under those
circumstances, and in particular if the digital spectrum,
in a world that is unpredictable, of course, turned out to
be one that provided a lot of commercial benefits to
broadcasters by moving to multiple channels, then it was
appropriate to assess additional public interest
obligation in return.
The recommendation that we put on the table is a
reflection of that and it's a suggestion, with a number of
options, on how to handle it. We wanted to be sure that
we didn't kill any experimentation or opportunities that
might be out there for people to see what would work in
the marketplace. We don't know what will work in the
marketplace.
So we included in this proposal a 2-year
moratorium to allow experimentation to take place and then
a suggestion of a menu of options or obligations if
following that broadcasters do indeed for some or all of
the day move to multiple over the air commercial-driven
channels, that range from assessing a fee to turning over
one of those multiple channels for public interest
purposes, but not following the cable model as a kind of
empty public access experience, but rather with some
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robust programming provided, or in lieu of the fee in-
kind contributions of public interest activities, with of
course Congress and the FCC to assess the specifics down
the road.
So that's what we have in this recommendation,
Les.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Yes. The only thing I want
to add to that is the key to our recommendation in terms
of multiplexing is the idea that -- is the fact that we
know so little about what this world is going to look
like. We still don't know whether certain stations are
going to be using HDTV or multiplexing. We don't know the
financial consequences of it.
The key issue here is flexibility in all aspects
in terms of what the future will look like, how much money
is involved, and the options that are available if it does
turn out to be a great windfall.
So with that, we should open it up.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes, Gigi?
MS. SOHN: Well, first -- I don't think this is
on.
Well, first I wanted to thank Les and Norm
because I know a lot of sweat has gone into this
framework, and my, I don't want to say criticisms about
this issue, but my criticisms are not intended to diminish
12
what you guys have done. I think you have done a
tremendous job.
There is some language stuff in this draft that
doesn't exactly excite me. I don't want to waste our time
with that. I think we can work that out later. My
preference is, if we want to achieve a consensus, let's
have neutral language as opposed to provocative language
on either side.
So I want to limit my comments on the
multiplexing, which I agree with in principle, to some of
the substance. My concern is that the proposal as it's
laid out here has some loopholes that could really render
the obligation almost worthless. So again, I agree with
the principle of the menu. I like the menu you've laid
out, Norm. Just there are a couple of details, and I'll
go through them very, very quickly just to get them on the
record.
My first concern, overall concern, is that I
don't think we should be looking at this from a financial
perspective. For example, the framework says that the
obligations would only kick in when the revenues from the
incremental channels, from the extra channels,
incrementally exceed the revenue from the main channel.
First of all, again, I think we need to look at this in
terms of opportunities and not who's making money and
13
who's not making money, number one.
Number two is, my concern is that since the
primary channel is going to be having the best programming
on it, the programming that brings in the most advertising
revenues, we're never going to get to a point where the
extra channels, even put together, are making more money
than the primary channel, and therefore the obligations
never kick in. That is probably my biggest concern.
If there's a way of redoing that language so
that it becomes more likely that the obligations will kick
in than less likely, I can live with that. That's my
biggest concern.
My second concern is the definition of
multicasting as several free over the air channels.
Again, my concern is that most of what we're going to see
-- again, we don't really know; there is uncertainty, I'll
certainly agree to that. But a lot of what we're going to
see is a mix of subscription and free. Again, we're not
talking about money. We're talking about opportunity.
We also may see multiple free or subscription
high definition pictures.
In the second paragraph you say "at less than
high definition." Granted, at 1080I you won't have
multicasting, but at 722 you can have multiplexing. And
as compression technology changes, who knows; you may be
14
able to have three or four high definition pictures. So
we don't want to limit it to that.
So again, I think it should be multiple free or
subscription, and it shouldn't be limited to whether it's
high definition or not.
The last substantive comment I have to make is
just a general disagreement. I think when we go back --
I'm sorry. Let me go back to my prior point.
My biggest concern on the subscription versus
free is, what if you have a program stream that is both
subscription and advertiser-supported. Then you basically
have double-dipping because you're making money both from
the subscription fees and from advertising fees. Yet it
doesn't count towards your multiplexing obligation for the
obligations kicking in.
So there may be a compromise to be drawn here.
It may be where it's both advertiser-supported and
subscription, because the concern is double-dipping.
My last concern is in paragraph 6, and again
just to reiterate -- I will not have as many comments with
regards to the other things, thank goodness. But this is
just generally a disagreement, that if you have multiple
free channels that you shouldn't multiply your obligations
to do general interest programming. That's something that
is contained in both of my proposals, the one I made on
15
April 15th and the one I'm making today. That's just a
fundamental ideological difference.
I really don't have much else to say about that.
Actually, there is one more thing I want to say. At the
end of that paragraph I think we need to be very careful.
This is more in terms of the language. When we talk about
where we put the fees, we talked about putting it in some
other fashion, "agreed to by Congress, the President, and
the FCC." My concern is that that kind of language opens
it up to negotiation with the Treasury, which we don't
want.
I think we need to be very, very specific that
we want the money to go into good public interest purposes
and not to the Treasury and other functions.
That's it.
MR. BENTON: Two points. First, in public
broadcasting's briefings generally about digital
television they talk in terms of three dimensions: the
high definition television, the multicasting or multiple
channels, and the datacasting. This is kind of silent on
the datacasting dimension and I think we really need to
beef up the role of datacasting, because we all know that
television and computers -- we're in the era of
convergence. It's now a cliche, and we really need to
think through the datacasting dimensions of the
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multiplexing, which are not mentioned here but are
critical in terms of the enriching and additional
information supplementary and complementary to the
broadcasting. So that's the first point.
Secondly, your point about the moratoria, I am
not sure I really understand this. Certainly I agree with
giving broadcasters flexibility for experimentation and
innovation. I have no problem with that at all, but it
seems to me that things like ascertainment and reporting
on what's going on should start from day one, should start
immediately. There should be no moratorium on those
processes that will allow us to gather information about
what really is going on.
So I would like to understand better the
moratorium point, the goal of which, i.e., giving
flexibility for innovation, I'm entirely in favor of, but
the reporting of the facts here, what's going on, we've
got to build in here. So I hope that is what you had in
mind.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Yes. The moratorium is not
referring to the other issue, the financial.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: It's strictly a moratorium
on fees assessed, not on any other obligations, including
not just existing ones but ones that we recommend
otherwise. It's on fees.
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The idea here is you want to do nothing to
stifle innovation and experimentation, to see what works
in the marketplace. I think partly our idea here is that
if it's going to work in the marketplace, whatever fees we
assess are not going to be a deterrent once it's taken
hold in the market.
Yes?
MR. GOODMON: Let me just restate my view about
this quickly. It seems to me that we really do know
what's going to happen in digital. I know I can run one
station or five stations or one station or two stations.
To the viewer at home, this means more television stations
and a mix of that, and it seems to me that the public
interest obligations should apply to every channel that we
have.
I don't know why any second or third or fourth
channel should be any different. So whatever the public
interest obligations are for our stations should apply to
all of our channels.
I would also suggest that the notion that in my
view we can somehow pay somebody something to not do that
is not serving the public interest. These can be good
stations that do a good job and the public interest
programming on these stations is important. As a matter
of fact, I think it's more important than paying somebody
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something. That's why we have the stations, to serve the
local community.
So I'm off the page here. Every channel that we
operate should have the same public interest requirements,
whatever they are, and there shouldn't be any paying here.
MR. CRUMP: I have a question.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes?
MR. CRUMP: Am I correct in the assumption,
though, because I'm hearing something a little different
here today, and perhaps I'm incorrect, that when all of
this would kick in would be when digital television kicks
in, not that we assume the new recommendations today
before we have the digital stations on the air and going?
Is that correct or incorrect?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes, it's correct. when
digital kicks in.
MR. RUIZ: I just want to second what Jim said.
I know you agreed to talk about my fax here, but there are
some points that I think are important to this matter. If
you're talking about multicasting or repeating the same
thing and putting it on other channels or versions of it,
like a soap opera channel, things like that, are we really
serving the public?
And I raise the question that we've always had a
lack of minority ownership and participation in network
19
television and in local television, and I think this is an
opportunity to introduce some notion that will allow
minority participation. Is it going to be repeating the
same thing we're doing in other channels? What is it
we're proposing? Isn't there a better way to serve the
public, bringing in new voices, new interests, and better
services to underserved communities? Because if we don't
change that, if we don't look at that seriously, we're
looking at another 50 years like the last 50 years, and I
think it would be very short-sighted.
Can there be set-asides? Should we request set-
asides for new voices, for new players to come in? We're
not saying they're not going to be entrepreneurial. We're
not saying that they're not going to try to make money for
their institutions. We're saying these are new revenue
streams, but there can be different programming, different
services.
Why haven't we looked at that?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Well, I think we should have
a fuller discussion of the larger question of minority
participation and ownership as we move along. In this
particular context it's certainly worth talking about as
well. But partly it's a question of I think the reason we
haven't looked at those issues so much is that they were
not brought up in any of our earlier meetings. They were
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brought up in the meeting we had in Minneapolis almost for
the first time.
We haven't had, either from our members or from
outside groups, proposals on the table here in this
particular area until recently or just now.
The question of whether or not we set aside
channels specifically for that purpose, other than in the
discussion we've had of an educational channel, obviously
is something we need to talk about. Partly it's whether
we want to. Of course, one of the suggestions that we
have here at the table is that an option in multicasting
is that a channel be set aside for public interest
purposes. We can get more specific in that regard.
If, however, you are talking about mandating or
requiring that if there's multiplexing a channel be set
aside or used by broadcasters -- not set aside -- used by
broadcasters for a particular programming purpose, that's
a slightly different issue and one in which I think there
are differences of opinion.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Obviously, the FCC right now
is dealing with at great length the problem of minority
ownership, that there certainly isn't enough either in the
local television or radio level throughout the country,
and it is something that needs to be dealt with.
I don't know if multiplexing is the answer to
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that particular question. Obviously, you have a proposal
on the table which we just received, which certainly
should be, elements of that, incorporated into our
document. But in terms of being part of this particular
discussion at this moment, I think it's rather difficult.
I think it is apples and oranges right now.
MR. RUIZ: I guess my dilemma is I'm trying to
envision -- and I'm in a large market, Los Angeles -- what
the future is going to look like. Like everybody here, we
don't know what it's going to look like. But I'm sitting
here saying, okay, there's a very large PBS station there
that's going to be having five to seven channels or
whatever the future holds. There's a board of education
station. There's the University of California station.
There's a college station, a 2-year college station.
There is four public broadcasting stations. Then there
are four -- there's five: FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, and then
the others. They're all going to set aside an educational
channel.
Where's all that programming going to come from?
I mean, are we really talking about certain services, that
we want to have diverse services in markets and access?
Do we really want to make a blanket statement that all
broadcasters in a market, say like Los Angeles, are going
to set aside an access station, each one of them? They're
22
each going to set aside an educational station? And then
you're going to have the public broadcasters? Where's all
this programming going to come from?
Aren't there other avenues and other ways of
cutting up that pie to make it more inclusive to other
groups and to other endeavors, commercial endeavors as
well? Because we don't want to have seven access
stations, seven educational channels, and the PBS
channels. What we want is quality and good service. We
want diverse voices.
I think it's just more complex than making the
very blanket statement or position. I think we would be
in error, I'm sorry.
MR. MINOW: Like Gigi, I first want to thank Les
and Norm. I think you've made a significant contribution.
With that, I want to just address philosophically the tone
of the thing about what digital is.
We're sort of saying, if there's a windfall
here, if there is a windfall then something should follow.
There's already been a windfall. The police would have
loved to have these channels. The firemen would have
loved to have these channels. The hospitals would love to
have these channels. The schools would love to have these
channels.
But the decision was made not to give it to
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them, but to give it to the broadcasters in exchange for a
public interest commitment. So I wouldn't look at this as
if it's a windfall. There's already been a windfall, to
the exclusion of police, fire, and all the others who
would like to use the channels.
So the question is what should the public
interest obligation be, not whether there should be a
public interest obligation. So it's a matter of tone and
language.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Okay.
Gigi?
MS. SOHN: I just want to make one suggestion
that I don't think is going to completely ameliorate Luis'
concerns, but may at least get us a little of the way
there. My proposal proposes as one of the menu options
that, basically a set-aside, that a broadcaster could
choose to lease one program feed outside of the
broadcaster's editorial control to another, to an
unaffiliated programmer. Perhaps you want to say it could
be a minority or a programmer from an underserved
community, but that's certainly an option which I didn't
see in the framework, which if you're amenable might be a
good thing to add.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Sure.
Yes?
24
MR. CRUZ: I submitted also a document on my
behalf in reference to this particular concern of Jose
Luis, which I wholeheartedly endorse. I think we would be
very remiss as a body if, in consideration of the
framework that we're undergoing now, the different areas
of discussion, if we really didn't seriously take this
into account.
I think as you indicated, the two of you, at the
start of this conversation here today, that by virtue of
the weight that we carry as a body that we might have some
influence on policy. I think the FCC, I think Congress,
and I think the President and all are very, very
interested in the kind of positions that we take.
We would be remiss, I think, certainly I know I
would as an individual, if we didn't take some kind of a
stance to endorse women and minority entrepreneurship as
well as employment opportunities. For us not to mention
that in some capacity as we go through these discussions
today -- and I think some serious thought has to be given
to what Jose Luis has indicated, but I think we would be
very remiss. And whether it was raised in Minnesota or
not, it should always have been of interest to us from the
beginning. We shouldn't have to wait for a proposal from
any one of us to indicate that.
I know I raised it simply because I had not seen
25
it mentioned at all before. But I think it's a very
crucial issue. In light of the fact you have 1600
stations, and my good friend Mr. Goodmon here to my left
just did the statistics for me. We have 1600 public
television stations now. In the very near future there
may be 8,000 channels. That's a lot. It says a lot.
I think we should take those entrepreneurial and
employment opportunities and concepts into consideration
as we go through the educative, the multiplexing, the
political discourse.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Certainly we can raise each
of these serially and see what we can come up with.
MS. CHARREN: Whatever we do about the
programming concerns and the ownership concerns, certainly
I don't think the Code is the kind of mechanism that
promotes good policy, because when it's so voluntary the
option is not to do it altogether. But we could get in
there at least language about the need for attention to
recruitment of women and minorities and the need for
outreach efforts in this area.
We seem to comment about everything else the
broadcaster should pay attention to. That may not solve
the problems you're talking about, but at least it
recognizes that we have our efforts going into the twenty
first century.
26
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: There are clearly three
areas of concern and they are of great concern, I think,
to all of us. There's ownership, there's employment, and
there's programming. We ought to see where we can draft
these in different places, and perhaps they ought to be
addressed in all of those places.
Let me ask Jose Luis: If we included in the
multiplexing area the option which you just suggested,
which is as we go through fees and alternatives to fees,
one of them is giving access to a channel specifically to
minority and underserved communities, would that be useful
and acceptable and satisfactory?
MR. RUIZ: Yes, it's a first step. I don't want
to ghetto-ize it. I think these are entrepreneurs that
are coming in and building service to sizable audiences in
their area. I think as you multiplex you are moving more
and more toward niche programming. As you move toward
niche programming, the reason why minorities have been
excluded in the process is because we broadcast to a
general audience. We are broadcasters, not narrowcasters.
As you move into multiplexing, you are going to
become more narrowcasters. You are going to go after
specific groups, a specific age group, a specific ethnic
group, or something like that. I think this opens the
door for the same kind of philosophy to go into those
27
other kind of communities.
I don't know if it's a set-aside. I guess my
problem, Norm, is that if somebody can get up and draw me
a picture of what, say, a market like Los Angeles would
look like under what we're proposing, I would have a
better understanding of it. But right now it's a very
blurred picture, with too much access and not enough
quality of service. I would like to try to refine that to
make sure that we have a quality of service as well as
access.
It doesn't make any difference if you put a
children's programming channel on if nobody watches it and
it's a bad children's programming channel. What we want
is good children's programming, good service. If we're
going to put on African-American programming, we want good
African-American programming that serves that community,
or Latino programming or any other community. I think
that's what we should do.
I'm not just saying a broad thing of access.
Access doesn't help anybody if nobody watches it. What
broadcasting is about is serving people, people watching
it.
The problem with the cable access channels is
that nobody knows they exist, because nobody watches them.
We don't want to do that again. We don't want to make
28
that mistake. Let's learn from that mistake.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Certainly, as I said
earlier, when we talked about one of the options here
being using one of those channels for public interest
purposes, we put in that it had to be programmed robustly.
We certainly don't want to get into that.
As we move ahead and talk about the educational
channel, we made it contingent upon funding programming so
it isn't just an empty exercise. We've got to be
sensitive to those things.
But I guess, Jose Luis, we need to get more
tangible here in terms of options.
MR. RUIZ: If you used a local children's
channel and it was only CBS', their children's channel,
their obligation, it would probably cost less,
substantially.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Sure.
MR. RUIZ: Which tells me if it's too much
access that no one's going to be able to afford the
quality. They can afford the quality of two hours, three
hours a day possibly, but not 14, 16 hours a day.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Jose Luis, you bring up a
very good point overall. When a local station goes from
one channel to the world of six, what are they going to
put on those other five channels? What are they going to
29
put on that makes economic sense? What are they going to
put on that qualitatively can be good enough so people
will watch it in a world of a 150-channel universe?
That's the question we all have to deal with.
Going back to your earlier point, there is ample
opportunity for us throughout this document to be dealing
with some of the issues that you and Frank have brought up
and that you have written up. I think what we need to
come up with is how to be more specific in terms of what
you would like to see done and how is this possible in
this new world.
Part of what we're wrestling with now is exactly
what you said: What is going to be on these channels?
MR. RUIZ: I think part of my dilemma is
visualizing what we have here already. You propose
something; I want to be able to visualize what we have.
In trying to look at this, are we saying that every
channel will set aside a channel for access in the market?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: No.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: No. What we're suggesting
is that stations may in some cases, may just do one 24-
hour high definition signal. That's what Jim has in mind.
Others may not do it much at all. Some may go with two
channels all the time. Indeed, those might be, as Gigi
suggested, two what could be defined as high definition
30
channels, albeit less than 1080. And obviously we did not
mean to suggest that they would be immune from any fees.
Some may go with however many compression will
allow. Those that do multiple channels will have
obligations, but those obligations will not be the same
for all of them. There will be, to provide flexibility, a
menu of alternatives. They might be simply a fee, dollars
assessed.
What we're suggesting -- to get back to another
point that Gigi made, in no instance here in this or in
any other place, and we will make it as explicit as we
can, would any of those fees revert to the Treasury. They
are to be used for public interest purposes, including --
we will make this more specific as well -- programming,
particular programming, and programming to make sure that
it's enriched programming for a variety of communities to
meet those diverse needs.
In other instances we want to provide the
flexibility to provide different kinds of public interest
services in lieu of a fee, but that are at that same
market level. That might be a channel that's set aside
and programmed for public interest purposes or it might be
providing free time to parties, that during the campaign
that was the market value of whatever the fee would be, or
it might be some other public interest purpose.
31
So we're not envisioning a world in which
everybody will do exactly the same thing. We're trying to
provide flexibility to serve public interests and we're
trying to provide flexibility for broadcasters to feel out
the marketplace.
Peggy?
MS. CHARREN: Based on 30 years of experience
worrying about children's television and program
diversity, I worry about a proposal that talks about
robust programming. It reminds me about the way the
Children's Television Act first said provide educational
programming for children. If the broadcaster still has
the power to make money from that public, so-called
"public interest programming," there's a push to have it
work in the marketplace. And for a lot of programming the
marketplace doesn't provide the kind of choices and
alternatives that I think you're talking about. If it did
we wouldn't have to sit here talking about programming.
So we can't legislate good programming. We
thought maybe saying educational would help. I mean,
after all, public broadcasting tends to know what
educational means, at least most of the time. But when
you have the -- I don't know. This isn't to attack NBC,
but when we have the "Saved By the Bell" philosophy of
education and that is what you get to serve the public
32
interest, then it's not working. I think we have to set
up a structure that encourages the choice, without
expecting the word "robust" to do anything in a system
that is still working to serve the bottom line, and maybe
the idea of noncommercial programming gets around that
because at least it takes that pressure away. There's no
question. Then you have to figure out how to pay for the
programming.
But I would worry about us recommending that the
broadcaster fulfil all these needs of the public. I also
think that to talk about the idea that there just isn't
enough programming and what are we going to do -- if we're
not careful we'll have like HBO; I get seven opportunities
to see the same movies in my cable system.
It's like saying, I think, why do we need any
more books in the children's television library for?
We've got all these books and you do a new book and how
much audience can it get? I mean, sometimes even I think
about that with the range of children's books there are.
There's always opportunities for new ways to
talk, say, to children and also to the rest of us, and
there's creative people who figure out how to do it. I
think the idea that you can't fill channels -- there's new
ways of thinking about what children's programming should
be, not based on what we've had for the last 30 years, but
33
other kinds of things that all these opportunities made
possible, the kind of thing Charles has talked about,
connections with data and getting out materials to
families.
Now, some of that fits into education. But when
we're talking about programming, education is what we're
talking about. I think we should just be careful not to
set up a structure that limits what we get to the kinds of
things that Jose is worrying about.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: I worry too about how you
can somehow encourage the possibility that you have a
channel set aside, that it actually has something
reasonable on it. I haven't come up with a better way of
doing this.
We certainly have -- there are a lot of
arguments to be made on either side of whether you want to
have commercial-free or not. If you have commercial-
free, you may guarantee getting nothing out there. If you
have some opportunity for commercial, it may provide a
strong encouragement to put something that's better on the
air. It may be that the best way to do this is not to
have the broadcaster run that channel if that's the
opportunity, but rather indeed to turn it over to some
group in the community with the provision of studio time
and editing and let them program it as they wish. That
34
may be a better way to go.
We need to work that through a little bit more
to reach a consensus. I agree that that's certainly a
problem.
Yes, Paul and Jim and Charles.
MR. LA CAMERA: Norm, first of all let me add my
voice to thank you for this framework. It's very logical
and rational. Flexibility and openness is essential, I
think, both to the group and to digital broadcasting. In
the same way that Peggy said that you can't legislate good
programming, that's why I worry also about this. You
can't legislate economic success.
I've said this before, as to how that
multiplexing might work, if there was an immediate thought
as to how to use that channel within the existing
resources of a commercial television station, it would be
a regional news service, a 24 hours a day regional news
service modeled on the dozen or so cable news services
that have been around the country now for 5, 6, 7, 8
years. Still I don't think there's one of them yet that's
broken into the black, although I think some of them are
getting close now.
If I do that with a second channel, provide an
ongoing 12, 14, 16 hour a day news service, I don't
understand the logic of why that brings me the additional
35
burden of paying ascertainments, the additional burden of
paying a fee, the additional burden of providing
children's programming.
Is that not by definition a service in itself?
"Public service" may be too sweeping a term. It's an
informational service. It's a news service.
Gigi raised the point about subscription, use of
some of these auxiliary channels for subscription use. I
think we need to be concerned about that. But I thought
again, as you pointed out, that the FCC was dealing with
that point on the fee structure.
As far as whatever resources emerge from this or
whatever obligations, how those will be directed, I'd go
back to what Robert Decherd and others have talked about
earlier, and that is we should be looking at people who do
that best and assist them to get some more resources, and
that's public television.
I don't think, as Jose Luis has said, the
concept of seven additional educational channels, seven
additional public service channels in the marketplace,
makes any economic, practical, or programming sense. I
just don't think it's feasible or possible. I just don't
think it is.
I think again, if we have resources to redirect,
it shouldn't be to ourselves or in that direction or
36
taking on additional infrastructure burdens or programming
obligations to ourselves, but to redirect them to those
people who can and seem eager and appropriate to do it
best, and that's public television.
MR. GOODMON: We're getting to it here now. We
might as well.
I want to make two points. This from a
practical point of view, WCVB can do a public affairs
programming in prime time and get a five or so, get a good
rating for it. Or WRAL can do a public affairs program in
prime time and we'll get a good rating for you. If you
put them in the community access channel in Raleigh,
nobody will watch.
But what we're trying to do here is, whatever
our audiences are, everybody has an obligation to serve
the public interest, and to come up with some channel that
we're going to announce, here's all the public affairs
stuff, it's not going to get the same viewership as if we
do it on every station. Every station has a following.
Again, I think we're making this way too
complicated. We're either going to have 1600 stations or
8,000 stations or a combination, and if a station has a
public interest obligation, and we think they should, then
every station should have that obligation.
I don't think that Paul thinks -- I know Paul
37
doesn't think that ascertainment is a burden or children's
programming is a burden. It's an opportunity, it's a
responsibility that we have, and we should do that on
every station that we have.
The public doesn't know whether it's digital or
analog or anything. It's just another channel. This is
really a straightforward proposition from the public's
point of view. So I'm really interested in the notion
that every channel has a public interest obligation,
whatever they are, and that that's what we're doing. I've
said that three times.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Charles.
MR. BENTON: I think as we talk about the
failure of access and the PEG, the public government
access experiment on cable television, that we should
remember what Henry Geller's conclusion on all this is, is
that this was really a very good case of the failure of
the public interest community to really push hard for the
allocation of the access -- of the franchise fee, the 3 to
5 percent franchise fee, to programming.
As you all remember the decision, when the Cable
Act was passed in the eighties, it was to apply that
franchise fee to the general fund of the cities and
therefore it was lost to noncommercial programming and
therefore gutted the public education access, the PEG.
38
So the funding of these public interest
programmings is really absolutely central, and we need to
take the lesson of what was not done in cable and bear
this in mind in our current discussion. That's really
point number one.
Point number two, and I hear Jim and I'm
enormously in admiration of his courage for his paper the
last time in Minneapolis and the revised paper that he's
given us today. Jim, the one point which we need to talk
more about is the very important point that you have just
made, your being vigorously opposed to the pay or play
idea.
If Luis is right in that as we're moving from
the -- and Frank Cruz -- from the 1600 channels to the
8,000 channels in the next 5 to 10 years, then we are
moving from a broadcasting to a narrowcasting model, and
obviously all the programming requirements in the
broadcasting environment should not apply to a
narrowcasting environment.
So how to maintain the spirit of your idealism,
which I admire enormously, in calling for public service
thinking and obligations on every channel, to the
realistic point that every channel can't do everything and
as we move into the narrowcasting mode, which is the
trend, how can there be a better division of labor between
39
the commercial and the noncommercial interests?
So in some cases the commercial folks will say,
I don't want to do this, but I'm willing to pay out of
this. I think that is a rational solution. How to do
this precisely I don't know, but I think that is the very
key point you've raised and it's something we need to talk
about further.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Certainly there are going to
be places where we're going to talk about that. Let me
just stop for a minute. I want to raise some points that
were raised earlier that we can dispose of relatively
quickly and then come back to a couple of areas where we
clearly need to spend more time.
Some of the things that Gigi had raised -- let
me say first, the notion of multiple high definition
channels we clearly had no intention of leaving ambiguous
or even suggesting otherwise that if there are multiple
high definition channels that that would not fit a
definition of multiplexing. We can change the language to
fit that.
In terms of the advertising-subscription mix,
which clearly can happen, my judgment on that would be
that if there is a fee structure set in place for
ancillary and supplementary services, subscription
services, and secondly for fees for multiple commercial-
40
driven over the air channels and there's a mix, that you
have two fees assessed that wouldn't necessarily be the
full fees. There'd be some proportional fee, but
presumably it's going to be based on the revenues coming
in, so that would be taken care of.
I think we need to elucidate that more, but if
you're going to do a mix of both you don't escape either,
is the basic point. Clearly, in every instance in which
we are recommending fees for revenues coming in we want to
explicitly suggest that those moneys are to be used for
the multiple public interest purposes that we are
promoting in this process and not for general Treasury
deficit reduction or for other related purposes.
The moratorium, to reiterate, is only on
whatever fees, we suggest, not on any other public
interest obligations.
Charles has raised a very interesting point, the
question of channels that are used for datacasting. I
think we need to work that through a little bit more, but
obviously that's something we can include in this process.
The question of the formula for revenues, and
this gets in part to something that you were suggesting as
well. We do have, as our deliberations have suggested,
basic differences expressed among the members about what
the grant of the digital spectrum meant. We have some
41
members, I think, who would try and make the case that
broadcasters ought to be given money for taking on this
tremendous burden, and obviously other perspectives that
suggest that, even if no additional revenues accrue, this
is a tremendous boon.
I personally thought it fruitless to try to draw
those lines in the dust and instead to see where we could
compromise so that we could reach a point where we could
come to some substantial additional benefit. So at this
particular recommendation I thought it wise to be very
sensitive to the questions of both the uncertainty of the
marketplace and also to make this threshold where we could
all agree that, if there were some financial boon for
broadcasters, then clearly we all agree that there was
something owed in return.
On that, it's very difficult to come up with a
formula. The idea here is that you have a formula, so
that if there is multiplexing it isn't just a
cannibalization, that if you get into a situation where
you're going to run five signals and in effect you're just
dividing up the old revenue pot the same way that's very
different.
Now, my own judgment is that basically
broadcasters, because there's an incremental cost to
putting out an additional signal, aren't going to do that.
42
They're going to run additional channels if there's a
commercial benefit to running additional channels.
I also believe that to take a static model that
suggests that if you move from analog to digital all
you're doing is dividing up marketplace is ridiculous.
What we've seen is in every innovation in communications
you expand the marketplace. That happened with the CD,
it's happening with DVD, it happened with the VCR. It
creates new markets and it expands markets. So I don't
think we need to operate on the basis of a static model.
We maybe can't find an appropriate formula here.
It may be better for us simply to suggest that this is our
intent. Besides, any formula that we offer is only a
suggestion to be picked up by whatever bodies, the FCC and
the Congress. The FCC presumably would assess fees. But
that's the idea here.
Perhaps we can discuss it more if there's some
disagreement.
MS. SOHN: Norm, if you presume, and I think
you're correct in presuming, that broadcasters are only
going to do multiple channels if they know they can make a
profit from it -- and this is setting aside, of course, a
couple years of experimentation, and both you guys and I
agree that we should have a phase-in or a moratorium or
whatever you want to call it, then what's the concern?
43
If broadcasters are going to do things that are
profitable, then what is the money concern? You're kind
of undercutting your argument.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: At least what some would say
is that this may be done just for competitive reasons in
the marketplace, to compete against cable, and it may not
be additional revenues. My own view is going to be
different from some of the others, some of the
broadcasters on the panel, in terms of what will happen
and what they owe in terms of an obligation. But I wanted
to be sensitive to all the different viewpoints here so
that we can reach a consensus on the thrust of this, which
is the most significant element.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Gigi, I might respond. Let
me throw the question back to you: What is the concern if
we have set up a formula whereby, when and if -- with all
due respect to Mr. Minow, the windfall has not happened.
It very well could and there is the obvious hope that it
will. And there will be an investment, that this will
happen. But this allows us the flexibility that, when and
if this does happen, then there will be fees and other
alternatives.
MS. SOHN: Well, one is an ideological viewpoint
concern, which I mentioned at the very beginning, although
not very articulately. I don't think I was awake yet.
44
That is that I don't think that revenues are relevant. I
don't think the windfall question either way is relevant.
I think this is about what are the opportunities
broadcasters are going to get, what are the opportunities
for more public service, what are the opportunities for
the public? So that's the way.
I framed the debate differently. Number one, my
only concern is a more substantive practical concern as a
risk: at the risk of repeating myself, that the way this
is formulated now I think is highly unlikely, because
you're going to put your best stuff on the primary
channel. And if the broadcasters here think I'm full of
it, please tell me. Because you're probably going to put
your best stuff on the primary channel, it's unlikely that
you're ever going to reach the point where the second,
third, and fourth channel, even combined, have a revenue
that exceeds the primary channel. I'd like to hear from
the broadcasters. Tell me on that?
MR. DUHAMEL: You're wrong on that, because the
thing is, suppose you've got a Warner Brothers catalogue
on the side. You want to take and develop that channel so
that you've got some revenue potential.
MS. SOHN: It's got some revenue potential.e
MR. DUHAMEL: The point I'm trying to say is,
suppose you were with NBC and you had this on the side.
45
You don't just take it all and the best of the deal you
put on one channel. Then you've just got nothing. You
have to spread it around and try to attract an audience on
it.
MR. RUIZ: Norm, I think what's going to make
economic sense to begin with is the same thing that made
economic sense in cable. That was other channels at
different hours of the day. You're going to repeat much
of what you've already paid for, product you've already
paid for for your main channel.
If you take away reruns from cable, what do you
have? How much programming is actually manufactured today
for cable itself?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: More and more every year.
MR. RUIZ: More and more every year as the
economic base grows, but the economic base is growing on
reruns, not originated programming. I think if stations
are going to survive, the first thing they're going to do,
they're going to have to put on reruns. For economic
reasons they're going to have to do that.
To clarify, my biggest fear is exactly what Paul
alluded to: deciding to put on another all-news channel.
Do we really need, is the public really crying for,
another all-news channel? And how much of an all-news
channel is repeating and repeating and repeating the same
46
stories the next hour?
MS. SOHN: Can I just speak to --
MR. RUIZ: One second.
With the explosion of cable, cable channels, can
somebody here at this table tell me who caters to the
needs of the Native American community today with all
these channels? Who really caters to the needs as a
broadcaster or cablecaster of the African-American
Community or the Asian community or the Latino community?
And don't tell me Spanish language broadcasts.
The same thing could potentially happen again if
we're going to repeat and repeat and repeat what we did
with cable.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Gigi.
MS. SOHN: I just want to make one quick point.
I think what you and he are both missing is the beauty of
the menu. You talk about having seven access channels.
No. If the marketplace is providing for education
channels or all-news channels, a broadcaster is not going
to be so stupid as to try to repeat the same thing.
So if they want to give the money to public
broadcasting, as you suggest is the object of very good
programming, they can do that. That's why I think this
works so well, is you don't have to. You can choose among
a menu.
47
I'd like to expand this menu, but, as I've just
said, with public interest things to do, and then you
don't have to worry and the marketplace works.
MS. CHARREN: Just two points relating to Paul's
news channel. The fact is what's missing in prime time
television as we know it is news for kids, news that helps
kids understand what's happening, where it's happening,
why it's happening. And on that news channel, if you were
doing it, it would be appropriate to set some block aside
that parents, who are having a little trouble with
violence or whatever on the news, could find at the dinner
table, for example. That could be a very practical part
of that schedule.
Secondly, I think we haven't really considered
as we think of what programs are going to win the ratings
game, what we're going to watch, that with all this stuff
out there, with all these platforms and programming, we
the public are going to have a different way of watching
television. Cable changed how we watch television. When
it started on television, UHF was a disaster. You
couldn't even tune it in. You had to get the FCC to make
rules for a click-dial on UHF stations, which was a real
problem for early public broadcasting.
Then cable came. At the beginning it didn't
have much of an effect. Now nobody knows whether they're
48
watching cable or broadcast television. You have to put a
little thing in the corner to know what you're looking at.
When we have all this new way of getting stuff
to the public, it's going to change how we watch and what
we expect and where we go for programming. It won't be
perfect. We might all still watch CBS, but I can't do
anything about that. That was a joke.
(Laughter.)
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Thank you, Peggy.
MS. CHARREN: But this would be a new world if
it works right, not in the first 5 years, but later. And
with the synergy that Charles talks about and with data,
hopefully this is going to be a new opportunity for the
public to relate to each other, to acknowledge, to at
least think in terms of what it could be like as we make
the rules, and don't sort of limit it just to make sure we
have some little things.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let me make a couple of
larger points here, one related to something Jose Luis
said earlier. We haven't spent a lot of time on this, but
one of my greater concerns that we are moving so rapidly
towards this rich menu of narrowcasting that we are losing
what broadcasting brings to the society and has brought to
the society.
When I go out and talk about this to the public
49
at large, I make the point that the last episode of
Seinfeld, which was hyped more than any other television
experience in history, was on the cover of every magazine
imaginable, it went on for weeks and weeks, and it got an
audience that was about 60 percent of the audience that
had been there for the last episode of MASH. That's a
reflection of the fact that broadcasting, which is the
public square, which is where more Americans than anyplace
else go for a common experience and a common message, is
declining.
One of the reasons, it seems to me, one of the
rationales, for giving the digital spectrum to
broadcasters as opposed to others is the hope that this
can help us preserve at least some elements of a public
square. I don't know what we can do to encourage all of
that, and we obviously have to let the marketplace
operate. That marketplace may lead us more and more to a
kind of narrowcasting that has many advantages in terms of
giving voice to different communities and satisfying
different narrow interests. But that also runs the risk
of compartmentalizing the society and taking us away from
these common experiences.
Indeed, as Jose Luis said, it's one thing if you
have programming by minorities for minorities, but
presumably we ought to have programming by minorities for
50
everybody. That's a part of what we want in a large and
diverse society. So we have to deal with that.
In terms of the narrowcasting, I for one do not
believe that we are moving into a desert where we have 600
lanes of the superhighway and most of them are occupied by
clunkers. Frankly, as I look at what's happening in the
innovative marketplace I cable, as I see new channels
developing, some of which are repackaging, they're
terrific. The Classic Sports Channel is repackaging, but
it's bringing back wonderful, rich information, indeed
information to young people, generations, who didn't know
that this stuff existed before.
I love the fact that we have Turner Classic
Movies now competing with American Movie Classics and
those movies are back. A lot of what happens on Nick At
Night is repackaging. But you can find ways to repackage
and make it tremendously commercially successful. I
believe in this marketplace the likelihood is that
broadcasters are going to go out there and they're not
going to just repackage the news.
When I see what goes on the cable local news
channel here, it's evolving to an extremely rich channel
that often has a lot more local news, with a lot more
community orientation, than what you find even in the
multiple hours of news that go on the commercial channels.
51
So there are ways of making that both
commercially viable and feasible. So I expect that indeed
we will see a lot of richness here. How we can convert
that richness in ways that best serve the public interest
along with what the marketplace offers is a part of our
goal. I expect that there will be multiple channels that
will be commercially viable and then we can use whatever
revenues accrue from fees or whatever options occur here
to make it an even richer experience.
To turn to another area that we clearly need to
spend more time on, the question of whether public
interest obligations, existing ones and others that we
recommend, then should apply equally to all channels in a
multicasting world. There are going to be some
differences here. Those differences it is clear cut
across the normal lines.
A part of the reason we put it down here, as I
see it, that if you paid the fees then you only have to
perform those other obligations on the one channel is for
a couple of reasons. But one of the reasons is that the
argument is that if you're going to run an all-soaps
channel, say, it makes more sense to get fees. And
instead of having them do three hours of children's
programming, which will mean a soap for children
presumably or something else, and there won't be an
52
audience, to take revenues for another opportunity to then
provide enriched programming for children or for
minorities or in other ways. That's some obligation,
certainly, whether it's ascertainment of community needs,
which I suspect that if the station's going to go out
there and do ascertainment of community needs you're not
going to have to do six separate ascertainments that are
completely different if you're running six channels.
You're going to be able to do that in a very efficient way
that can meet all of those needs.
Other things like closed captioning obviously we
need to apply to all, but some of these other things could
be done much more efficiently.
Now, we need to air our views on this, I think,
a little bit more and maybe we will come to a conclusion
that's different than that. But it seems to me that a
world in which you have a fee structure and they apply
those obligations in the richest fashion in the place
you're going to get the most audience, appropriate
audience, and then have money that you can use for other
obligations that are applied that can be spread out
better, is a more efficient and a better way.
MS. CHARREN: Just one point I forgot to
mention. I think it's the third paragraph, you talk about
the fees going to subscription channels, pay services, pay
53
per view. You didn't mention public broadcasting. You
don't mean to keep them out of that mix, did you?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Those are the fees that are
set to come in under the Act already for ancillary and
supplemental services.
MS. CHARREN: Yes, but we don't say where those
fees are going.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: In other places we do.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: In other places we say it's
going to public television.
MS. CHARREN: The more you mention that the
happier I am, since I think that a lot of the public
interest programming would get produced by public
television.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: You've said that several
times.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: On that point, Paul
obviously raises a point that we all have discussed and
are sensitive to and generally agree with. We want, in a
world where we want broadcasting and where we want these
enriched experiences, to enhance to role of public
broadcasting as much as we possibly can. But I don't want
to dump all kinds of stuff simply into the laps of public
broadcasting. I believe that we ought to encourage, as we
do here in our language, that the transition to digital be
54
made easy for public broadcasting and that they be
provided a base of ongoing revenues through some kind of
trust fund and that they be given additional
opportunities, but not the exclusive franchise for the
creation of an educational channel, which we will
determine very soon.
I also think that commercial broadcasters in a
digital age ought to play a very significant role and a
role beyond just this minimal level of standards here,
with a lot of opportunities that can enrich this
experience. We've used the term before "ghetto-ize." I
think it would be unfortunate if we ghetto-ize any area of
public interest obligation into public broadcasting. It
ought to be letting many flowers bloom.
Paul.
MR. LA CAMERA: I think you misunderstood a
couple of my points. One, Peggy made a very good point
about news for children and I was remiss in not thinking
of that.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: But you won't make that
mistake again.
(Laughter.)
MR. LA CAMERA: In 27 years, you'd think I'd
have learned.
To use the term "robust," I would anticipate
55
that, again, if the station did decide to use one of these
companion services for a local and regional news service
it would be a robust news service and not a repackaging.
I didn't mean to suggest that. That's where our expertise
and resources tend to lie, to rest.
Gigi, I understand the beauty of the menu. What
i don't understand the beauty of is if I do that service,
and again it's the most logical one available to us, why
it brings with it a fee, the payment of a fee. If I'm
providing an additional news service in a robust, creative
way to my community, I don't understand why it brings with
it the payment of a fee obligation, but if on the other
hand I take one of those channels and give it back to my
network -- and if my particular network is very interested
in a soap channel, then I could understand there's
economic consideration there. But if I'm providing a
service locally, I don't understand why it necessitates
additional obligations and burdens when I'm going into
this experimental arena as it is.
As I said, there are models, including the
Washington model. These are yet to be determined
economically viable or successful models. That's what I
like about this, is that it does have within this model
the component of the revenue, this being a successful
venture, and if it becomes a successful revenue venture
56
then, yes, I agree with you and Jim that it should bring
other obligations. If it's not, then these obligations
become simple burdens and tend to be discouragements to
experimentation and innovation. I sincerely believe that.
MR. GOODMON: Norm.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes.
MR. GOODMON: It seems to me the goal is to
preserve and strengthen the local free, over the air local
broadcasting system. Another model here is not that we
create all these new wonderful program channels, but that
business continues as it is now and it is now a fight for
the best programming, a fight for the programming that
gets the ratings.
There's nothing to prevent one station now from
having Fox and Warner Brothers, and if they're not going
to do HD they could run three. We're going to really
disenfranchise local broadcasters if we don't pay some
attention. The big organizations that have the big power
with the networks, what's to prevent UPN and Warner
Brothers from being on the same station?
MS. SCOTT: They are now.
MR. GOODMON: Not at the same time. You only do
that if there's not another one to do it. But now the
networks are divided because of the number of stations.
But when we get into the multicasting business somebody
57
could have two. I mean, we could really mess up the local
broadcasting system that we have if we don't pay attention
to this.
What's going on now is who has the market power
to get the best programming and that's what it's all
about, and we're going to find some local broadcasters are
going to be left without any if we don't pay attention to
it.
Is that too simple? That's just the market kind
of notion.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: But in part, if you have a
local broadcaster who decides simultaneously to run Warner
Brothers, UPN, Fox, or whatever, then at least under our
model they will end up having to pay a significant fee
that can be used for public interest purposes in the local
community.
MR. GOODMON: But it's undercutting the
viability and the diversity of the local marketplace,
which it seems to me we ought to be working the hardest on
to make sure that our digital revolution doesn't destroy
that.
MR. CRUMP: I know this has been said many times
before, but let's remember that what is going on here is a
huge expenditure of money by the local broadcasters to go
into digital. Our trade publications within the last
58
couple of weeks pointed out that in the four weeks of
August for the first time if we added all of the network
programming together, they were beaten by the total of the
cable viewing that we had, which tells us how the
narrowcasting is accumulating a total audience.
What that means is our competition is getting
more and more difficult to deal with. We're looking, many
of us, looking at digital as a means of trying to, not
preserve, but to try to resurrect, a larger audience that
we used to possess previously but we don't have today.
Then when we start to talk about we're going to
narrowcasting and this -- well, there are many
broadcasters who say: My God, people talk about this, you
know, but what I'm about to do is take my own audience and
split it as well, so that again I'm supposed to make money
by splitting an audience as I go, when all of these years
we've been trying to get to the largest audience we could
get, and it's going to cost us additional expenses in
order to do this.
It's going to be an interesting situation.
There undoubtedly will be great experimentation in various
markets as to who does what, but I think in the very
beginning and for many years it's going to be a continuing
fight on the part of the local broadcaster to try to
preserve the audience that he has for his main channel,
59
because we're losing it every single year. Now it's
getting down to the point that for the first time we've
looked the evil guy in the eye and have to say: My God,
you're not only gaining on us, we're getting behind in
this fight.
I think we should remember that when we talk
about a windfall coming to us. There's no built-in
windfall there and it's going to be years before we can
see any real results, because until the sets get out there
and people can receive the digital signal that's going out
in whatever form it's in, we have nothing to sell. But we
have effectively increased tremendously the cost of what
we are presenting to program because of the simulcast.
MR. MINOW: Mark Twain once said: "One should
never make predictions, especially about the future." I
know when I served on the board of CBS at the beginning of
the year we would be shown a presentation of what the
schedules would be like of ABC, NBC, CBS. The second year
I was on the board I said: You know, they used to have a
chart like that in Detroit; it said "Ford, General Motors,
and Chrysler." They didn't have room on the chart for
Volkswagen or Toyota or anybody else. I said: What kind
of chart have we got here? What about cable? What about
UHF? What about satellite television?
People in the business tended not to see what
60
was happening about them. When UHF was beginning and I
was in the government, the UHF people were very worried
about cable. They came to complain to me. I said: You
know, cable is the best thing that's ever happened to you
because it's going to make your channel as available as a
V channel.
This business is changing constantly. The best
thing that's in your draft is the openness to
experimentation. You've got the brightest, most creative
minds in the country in this business. They'll figure out
a way to do it.
I don't know which way it's going to be, but
you'd better look at this as a great opportunity to
compete with cable, because you have the same opportunity
they have of having more than one channel. The test here
is going to be the limit of your imagination and
creativity.
The worst thing we could do or Congress could do
or the FCC could do would be to write rules here which are
inflexible. That's the point I want to make, although I
do believe you can call it -- it gets into semantics. You
can call it a windfall or whatever. I regard it as a
choice that Congress made to say no to the policemen, no
to the firemen, no to the hospitals, yes to the
broadcasters.
61
But if it's a yes to the broadcasters, there's
got to be an opportunity here to provide public service.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: I think we're going to have
to move on in a minute. Before we do, just for our own
guidance, it seems to me we have some signals in most of
these areas on what we can do to tighten our language and
be more sensitive to these menu options and to diversity
concerns. Let me just quickly read the couple of
sentences that we have about the public interest
obligations on all or one channel and see what the sense
of the group is and whether we ought to change that,
eliminate it, or leave it.
What we say is: "With this fee or in-kind
arrangement in place, other statutory or regulated public
interest obligations in areas like children's television
would only apply to the primary channel and not in equal
amounts to all the other multiplexed signals, unless the
broadcaster could demonstrate the public interest benefit
to the FCC of proportionally spreading specific
obligations around the multicast channels. For example,
it may prove advantageous to give a broadcaster
flexibility to place political messages on whatever
channels attract the right demographic audience to achieve
maximum benefit."
MS. CHARREN: I'd like to do away with the word
62
"only" in that sentence.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: "Would apply," yes.
MS. CHARREN: The idea that it applies only to
the primary channel is what that sentence is about and
that's ridiculous. It may not apply to the equivalent of
a porno channel, but the fact is there's a lot of places
where a children's piece would be appropriate, and I think
what you're trying to say is that there are some places
where it might not be appropriate.
I really am not terribly interested in a home
shopping place for children on the Home Shopping Network,
although the Girl Scouts just made it possible to get a
fashion badge from the Express Fashion Store, which is
disconcerting.
So that I think that that's a flexible thing,
too, that children belong in some places and not in
others. But I think that this idea that it only applies
to the primary channel is not the way to go.
MS. SOHN: Maybe I misunderstood this, but my
position has always been if you're doing three channels
you've got to multiple the public interest obligation
times three. You shouldn't necessarily have to spread
them out over the channels, but you could, except for the
political programming, which I think you have a legal
problem on, which I don't want to get into right now
63
unless you really want to. But you could segregate them
onto the primary channel if you wanted to.
But you're saying you don't like my
multiplication thing, right?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: I want to get the sense --
MS. SOHN: I think you should multiply, but I
don't have a problem with giving the broadcaster
discretion to put them on one or another channel.
MR. GOODMON: I don't know what the primary
channel is. A channel is a channel. I don't know how
you're going to define which one of your channels is the
primary channel. If there are three or four channels,
they're all --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: My guess, Jim, is if you run
five channels we'll be able to pick out what's the primary
channel.
MS. SCOTT: The one that makes the money. The
one that makes the money.
MR. GOODMON: The highest ratings?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: No. I think you'll find --
if you are a CBS affiliate at the moment, my assumption is
you will put on that first channel what is the normal CBS
schedule. On subsequent channels you will experiment
somewhat more than that. My guess is that you will be
able to tell what the primary channel is.
64
Gigi had a valid point, although I don't
necessarily agree exactly with the economic model, because
the secondary channel could in fact make more money than
the primary channel. But I think it'll be fairly self-
evident for the first several number of years what is the
primary channel.
MR. LA CAMERA: ...know what the primary channel
is.
MR. ORNSTEIN: To use an even better model, with
HBO there's now a one, two, three, four, five family, and
it's fairly clear what the primary one is, even though
there's a lot of blurring. But it's fairly clear. But
it's really a question of, that issue aside, I suppose
it's at least theoretically possible that you could have a
huge amount of blurring, although not likely.
The larger question is the one that Gigi raised:
Do we want to say that all channels are equal in this
regard and they all have exactly the same obligations? Do
we want to provide flexibility? Do we take care of that
flexibility and remove the word "only"?
MS. CHARREN: Not just remove "only." Well,
that helps, but "not in equal amounts" is really the most
problematic.
In looking at that sentence, I think what's
troubling me is "children's television." In all of this,
65
that's the one place where we really mandate to do three
hours and it seems like this was a way of undercutting
that mandate.
CO-CHAIR CRUZ: That's easy.
MS. SOHN: It's non-statutory. Again, you've
got major legal problems segregating them.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Under Jim's recommendations
here under multicasting, this statement seems pretty
simple to me: "If the broadcaster selects the
multichannel option of broadcasting in digital, he should
be required to fulfil the same public commitments on each
channel. Then he goes on to say there should be no
opportunity for pay or play, which I'm sorry to say I
disagree with and I think there should be discussion later
on.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I think if somebody has 5
channels I think he'd be hard-pressed to have 15 hours of
educational children's programming on his 5 channels.
MS. CHARREN: I disagree with that.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I know you do.
MR. BLYTHE: Could he run the same programming
or does it have to be different?
MS. CHARREN: The specials from ABC, ten years
worth of programming.
MR. GOODMON: It doesn't have to be different
66
programming.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: No, presumably it doesn't
have to be. But then you run into the question, does it
serve the public interest if you have a sports channel or
an all-sports channel to take three hours to run
children's programming.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: The idea of the model is
flexibility, flexibility to demand that the same...
MS. CHARREN: I'd like to know why when we talk
about public interest obligations on each station you use
children's television as the thing that we don't have to
do? Why does that come up? Because we have a legal
mandate now?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: No, it's because it's the
most powerful.
MS. CHARREN: Believe me, it's the most
necessary kind of way of getting a democratic society to
continue. I could give you 5,000 hours of programming
that don't exist for children that should in a society
that cares about young audiences. That doesn't mean ours
is bad, but there's an opportunity for all kinds of
programming for children. Now, I don't want to say that
it has to happen in a particular way and I don't want to
say that that's the only thing we need to do, but I don't
want to preclude the idea that children are not
67
appropriate for any channel except the primary channel,
which we have the obligation now.
It isn't just, narrowly stating, education which
is a particular type of programming children are entitled
to. You know, it's 40 million individuals. It goes up to
17. By law now, when you're 18 you can vote, and only 17
percent of this audience votes when they're 18.
If you want to reach the teen audience to try to
make them understand what their responsibilities are, why
it's important to know that you have to participate in
making this country work, you could spend a lot of time on
a lot of different channels making that happen. So I
don't want to say children on the primary channel. I
think that undercuts the whole purpose of what the digital
opportunity is.
On the other hand, I think there are more needs
than just children.
(Pause.)
MS. CHARREN: My God, the whole place got
silent. I didn't mean to turn you all off.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Our primary channel -- well,
we'll grapple with this. I guess that's the best we can
do right now. Let's move on to discuss the education
issue, and we have some questions here as well.
It probably isn't necessary to go into great
68
detail on what we have here in the proposal. It follows,
I think, very much what we've talked about before, setting
aside one 6-megahertz on the analog spectrum in each
community for educational purposes, broadly defined, with
first dibs on applying this going to the public
broadcasting station or stations in the local area, but
they have to come up with a plan and that plan has got to
show great sensitivity to the local community, the diverse
needs of that community, cooperation with institutions,
libraries, schools, and others in the community, and a
programming distinct from what otherwise is on those
channels; and if the FCC doesn't approve the plan then
it's open for bidding by others.
So let's see what kind of comments we have on
that.
MR. RUIZ: Several I have. You have my paper.
I don't think the public broadcasting station
should be given first, no more than I think Les would say
that, because NBC had football last year, they should have
first option to carry it this year. It should be a
laissez faire.
For example, in Los Angeles we have a board of
education station, then you have KCT. Well, KCT is the
bigger, stronger, better financed station. But which one
is the one that's totally dedicated to education? So I
69
think you have to be very careful there. They may be able
to form a better partnership. So I don't want to exclude
the public broadcasting station, but I don't want to give
them first option.
I don't think I can, as I spell out, support the
trust without knowing what the trust is doing and what
it's going for and how it's doing it. I think Congress
needs to support public broadcasting as it makes the
transition to digital and I support that. The request is
$400 million, Frank?
MR. CRUZ: Yes, for digital.
MR. RUIZ: I support that. The other things I
could not support unless I knew much more than I do.
Now, I think we have to support the Department
of Education in what they're doing. The only time that
truly independent producers as well as minorities
participated in children's programming, and others, was
when ESAA was in existence, which Ronald Reagan knocked
out in 1980. But under the ESAA grants you really had
programming which dealt with not generalities, but
specific needs of children in this country, and I think we
are remiss in not looking at the public education in this
case.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Explain what you mean by
incorporating the Department of Education?
70
MR. RUIZ: Under ESAA the Department of
Education gave grants. Things like Villa Allegre, Que
Pasa and many, many other projects came out. It really
launched some of your top minority producers today --
Montezuma Sparza, Juan Garcia got his start.
But they were very specific. They would get a
proposal. They weren't broadcasters, they weren't looking
at what affects the whole nation, will this fly in the
whole nation. They would sit there and say, here's the
children's need, here is a proposal from producers to meet
that child's need, and they would fund and produce the
series.
I think if we leave the Department of Education
out of it, you have the FCC and you have stations and
other things happening. If you really want to, say,
address the question of preparing our children in math or
science, which are really things that are pretty universal
across the country, you're not going to get into the
conflict with the Texas criteria or the California or New
York criteria, I think there are certain standards that
the Department of Education can work with producers to
produce programming for our children in those fields of
math, science, and other areas.
So I think when you talk about funding and the
month going to areas, I think we really want a partnership
71
with the Department of Education if we're going to talk
about education channels.
MS. CHARREN: It was always my feeling that
public broadcasters would do more to serve kids, would do
more to serve diverse audiences, if they had more money,
if the structure was such that they could serve our
audiences and still get funded. I think that California -
- Los Angeles is such an unusual market in terms of how
many stations you have that it's an unusual way to think
about whether or not public broadcasting works.
It's my feeling that public broadcasting has
done a pretty good job with kids.
MR. RUIZ: Recently?
MS. CHARREN: It's a structure that's been set
up. The Department of Education is not necessarily the
best place to be a broadcaster. It has other things.
MR. RUIZ: It's not a broadcaster. It's a
programmer.
MS. CHARREN: Programming. Well, I think the
programming from the Department of Education could be part
of the public broadcasting service. But if you don't
think of public broadcasting as the institution that
serves education, I think we're missing a very good bet in
terms of what structure is going to run those.
Villa Allegre was on PBH in Boston. Who's going
72
to distribute all of that?
I do think that the producers, to get a
diversity of producers, is important. But it sounds like
I'm hearing that public broadcasters should not be where
the education starts. That's like saying commercial
television shouldn't be where the entertainment starts or
the news starts. We could set up a whole news institution
in the country to do news, which might be less connected
to "if it bleeds it leads," but that's not what we're
doing.
I don't know, I may be hearing something you're
not saying, but it sounds sort of negative to public
broadcasting. As it encourages diversity, I think it's
terrific.
MR. RUIZ: I think that single public
broadcasting as one homogeneous system would be a mistake.
I think what I'm recommending in my paper is that there
are educational licensees; because they get their licenses
through an educational system doesn't mean that they are
small systems. If you look at South Carolina, if you look
at Nebraska, if you look at some of the others, I think if
you bring those into the Department of Education to really
work at addressing the issue, you come out with a better
proposal.
This is not excluding the delivery system,
73
Peggy. This is expanding the products, how does the
product get manufactured, who manufactures the product,
what is the intention of the product, that you will expand
it.
I don't think Los Angeles is a unique market. I
think if you look at New York, if you look at Connecticut,
if you look at New Jersey, if you look at the two stations
that are in New York itself, you have a lot of that
overlapping, but it's to do what. And you may find in
that area -- for example, the New Jersey one is a network,
is a State license. It has stations throughout the State
of New Jersey, but they go into New York as well. The
actual WNET is a New Jersey licensee, but it's housed in
New York.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Can I ask Frank what he
thinks about this? A lot of this was based, obviously, on
things that you had brought up. I'd like to hear your
point of view.
MR. CRUZ: A couple of thoughts. In reference
to the proposal that was submitted on behalf of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ABS, PBS and the
public broadcasting industry, our greatest concern, and I
think the writings reflect it now, is that we certainly
believe that we have a very difficult task in public
broadcasting when we are subjected to the whims and ways
74
of Congress year in and year out.
Just to take you back a couple of years ago,
there were threats of zeroing public broadcasting out
completely and we barely survived. The financial, the
appropriations on an annual basis, is very problematic,
because we never know how high it will be, how much they
will cut. So the advocacy and the framework and the
documentation that we submitted for a permanent adequate
trust fund for the creation and for this conversion to
digital I think is on target and that's what we would like
to see.
The second channel, the 6 megahertz, I think
public broadcasting in essence, and our paper says that we
are prepared to apply for that, to deal with that.
However, our concern was that if it becomes another
mandated issue and not funded that we would have the same
problem that we have with regular public broadcasting that
would have to be at the whims and ways of going back to
Congress.
I also happen to feel that the digital era -- I
think I see things more in terms of opportunities than I
do problems, and I think Jose Luis is on target in wanting
to extract perhaps or at least ask of public broadcasting,
if it does get this permanent trust fund and should it
also get the second channel, that we certainly become more
75
inclusive and we become more adaptable to all of the
different kinds of programming that is available, because
I think it will offer an enormous amount of opportunities
and an enormous amount of different kinds of new services
and public services that we can apply. We should take all
that into account.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I think there may be a way to
incorporate both of these things in language which does
include public broadcasting as well as open up
possibilities for other.
MS. CHARREN: I agree with Frank, but what I got
nervous with was saying -- I agree with all the
programming concepts, but I worry about a gradual
institution.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let me say that the reason
we drafted it this way was in part a sensitivity to public
broadcasting, but it was also out of fear that we would
overwhelm the FCC if they had a completely open bidding
process for every single area and then they had to
evaluate however many plans came in.
At the same time, we clearly didn't, because
everybody knows the quality and sensitivity to local needs
of public television stations around the country is
uneven, so we clearly didn't want to simply give it to
stations that in many cases wouldn't be able to do the
76
job. So taking both of those things into account is why
we came up with this process of giving them a first cut
and then seeing if they could pass muster.
But if there's a better way of doing that --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I also hesitate, on the
Department of Education, to bring in another bureaucracy
into the process. That scares me, adding yet another
layer to accomplish what we want to. And I'm aware of a
lot of the good shows you mentioned, a lot of the good
programming, but I really feel that in the hands of public
broadcasting as well as some of the other producers that
you have brought up, I think it's better not to bring in
another institution.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: There may be a way at least
of making sure that there's a linkage between the concerns
the Department of Education has had in these areas and
making sure that we have these channels, that there's a
communication link set up. That's a thing we can work on.
Charles and then Bill.
MR. BENTON: I agree with this section as
written, with a minor addition at the bottom of page 4
which I'll come to shortly. But I think, as I mention in
my letter that I sent to you both and copies to everyone,
that this single recommendation or set of recommendations
in the arena of education could be the most important
77
legacy of our Commission if it actually did get
implemented.
I think Robert Decherd in suggesting a permanent
retention of the 6 megahertz on a one channel per market
basis has made a really fundamental contribution to the
work of our Commission and I hope we do not lose sight of
his vision on this as we move forward here.
This one channel per market with the extra 6
megahertz could also help in a beginning way to solve the
problem that is of deep concern to Mr. Tauzin in Congress
and that public television is struggling with in an effort
to sort out the overlapping stations. If there was one
station per market for education, then there would be --
and some funding attached to it, obviously, which is
critical -- then there would be an arena for cooperation
among the competing overlapping public telecommunications
entities on a per market basis. So this could really be
good news.
The specific that is missing, that I would like
to suggest adding in the second paragraph, page 4, below
the bottom, starting with "Under current law," you do need
to add before "elementary, secondary, postsecondary,"
along with "lifelong learning," "preschool, and early
childhood." So really the intent here should be cradle to
grave and we do need to recognize the centrality, the
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centrality of television in the preschool years, not just
starting with elementary. So this is a crucial point.
Let me just say finally that, despite Peggy's
enthusiasm for public television's role here, that public
television by and large on a national basis has failed in
this area. They've failed badly. Educational television,
with the exception of the Adult Learning Service, which
has been a modest success, has been a failure and it's
administered by public television, who has in fact just
fired all the people and gotten out of the business.
So the educational television forces, which are
local in their control and meets at this convention which
I was at in St. Louis last month, is radically underfunded
and suffering from poverty big time. To give you the hard
fact here, which I have mentioned several times before,
the total amount of money for K-12 schools programming in
this country, that is for production of new programming
and for acquisition, is at best $5 million, compared to
$50 million for the U.K. for new programming only with the
two channels, BBC and Channel 4.
Our use of the medium of television for
education in this country is really nothing short of
disgraceful. So the notion of harnessing this really
powerful medium, not just for in-school programming but
for addressing national problems and challenges like adult
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functional literacy -- we've got 40 million adults who are
functionally illiterate -- or job training and retraining,
the opportunities for television here on a constructive
basis, both from commercial stations and public stations -
- this is not just a public television deal here; this is
their opportunities. There are tremendous opportunities
for the commercial sector as well.
This is something I've spent my life in, trying
to serve educational needs for the private sector, and the
opportunities here for service and making money in a
constructive way are enormous. So if we can get this
permanent retention of the extra 6 megahertz on a one
station per market basis as a result of our Commission
activities, I believe it'll be one of the great legacies
that we can be enormously proud of, and I give Robert
Decherd the credit that is due to him for first initiating
this idea. Hopefully he can get the NAB to support us as
well and we can work together and make this really work.
So this is a fabulous plan. I support it.
There are some refinements, obviously. We'll have a
chance to discuss those refinements later. But I think
this plan as laid out in your paper is outstanding.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: The record should reflect
that Gigi came up with a comparable proposal
simultaneously, so you can both share the credit.
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MS. CHARREN: Just as I complain of the fact
that our schools are falling apart structurally from lack
of funding, not because people want kids to be in
buildings that don't work, I feel that way about the fact
that public broadcasting doesn't do enough in this area on
funding problems, which are not something which they
endorse. They know they have funding problems.
I just want to add that we should recognize, I
think, as a group because we have to deal with it after
the fact of the proposal, that the money from auctioning
this additional spectrum that we're going to presumably
say should go to public broadcasting is already allocated
in the budget, in the deficit, and whatever one does with
money. That's going to be a politically tough row to
push, or to plant or something, for all of us, because if
the money is allocated in the budget getting it back is
very difficult.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: It is no doubt very
controversial to recommend that money that has already
been allocated for budget purposes be reallocated. We are
an Advisory Committee, obviously. That's a decision that
has to be made by Congress. I would hope that here is
another area where the power of our commitment and what we
do afterwards will matter.
MS. CHARREN: I agree with that.
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CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Bill and James, did you have
a comment as well? Let me turn to Bill first.
MR. DUHAMEL: Actually, what I wanted to say has
been said here, but my children were preschoolers in
Chicago before I moved to South Dakota and the educational
programming that was there in those days, it was just
marvelous, the things they were doing. And it's gone, or
maybe if it's not gone it's limited.
I think the crying shame is the potential for
educational programming. That's why I wanted to emphasize
this. The thing is now that I live in South Dakota, South
Dakota-North Dakota is probably 700 miles north and south
and 400 miles east and west, and there's about 1.4 million
in that. There are very tiny school districts out there
that are 50 miles from anybody else. They have severe
educational problems. They're trying to keep these things
open because they physically can't move people more than
50 miles a day.
The need is here in the rural areas. Frank
would probably say the same thing in Nebraska, Wyoming,
Montana, and the need is here. I agree with Charles on
adding the preschool in there, but I would like to see the
emphasis on this expanded spectrum here go into this
lifelong learning from preschool on, and not just -- one
of the criticisms I have is I'm old enough I remember in
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the sixties when it was ETV and it became public
broadcasting. Public broadcasting has done some marvelous
things, but I just don't want to see another deal that's
put out here generally and somehow we forget the
educational things because, as Peggy says, there are
serious problems in our schools and nobody can figure out
how to solve these things.
Maybe if we took some of the money they're
dumping in there, somehow they can figure out how to solve
them. But the rural areas are just -- oh God, it's just
terrible out there. That's what I wanted to say that this
is critical on.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: James.
MR. YEE: I guess the comments I'm stating are
one sitting have already been stated, but I must disagree
with Jose Luis on why public television did not get first
shot at this. I still have mixed opinions on this,
because I do believe that this is an opportunity to fire
up public broadcasting again and give them a clarity of
mission and purpose. In some ways they've been calcified
over the years due to survival purposes.
I also do think that if we do let the public TV
stations go in first they'll come back with the same
things, the same old things. By forcing them to open up a
little bit, I'm not sure whether by a one or a two-step
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process or just one step -- I think that's something that
could be negotiated -- I think it will really make them
competitive to bring in new leadership, to bring in ways
of doing things, create again in a creative way. They're
not challenged now other than just limping along. That
disturbs me because I think that they're just at a
midpoint where public broadcasting don't want to be
unwell, but they ought to bring in the alliances, the
partnerships they may not be thinking about.
If you open it up to not just public TV, but to
other bodies in this nonprofit vein, I think we could see
something happen here, something creative, something
flexible. I do think that that again goes back to the
importance of greater participation and thinking and
imagination and commitment, not just a single focus.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: What do members think about
an alternative to having this two-step process? If
there's a better way of building more flexibility in the
beginning, then we certainly can incorporate that.
MR. RUIZ: I think it's just taking out the word
"first." Page 4, the bottom, last paragraph: "hope that
public television stations will be given first
opportunity." No, be given opportunities, but not first
opportunities. Have them work on a partnership, that's
all I'm saying. I'm not excluding them from the process.
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I'm including them. I'm just saying, let's say laissez
faire: the best proposal.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: What you're saying is that
there should be simply an open proposal process to any and
all?
MR. RUIZ: As Jim puts it, we would encourage
them to form partnerships, local partnerships.
MS. CHARREN: I think that if we did that we'd
have to open up the digital stations to all comers. If we
have the station in a market, the commercial station,
getting this opportunity to increase their service to the
public and their bottom line, that the same should hold
for the public station in the community.
MR. RUIZ: We're not talking about the digital.
MR. DUHAMEL: This is the extra channel.
MS. CHARREN: Yes, but you are going to set up a
whole new structure.
MS. STRAUSS: I'm not sure it's going to make
that much of a difference if you take out the word
"first." I think that because the public stations are in
the position which they are now, they're automatically
going to have significant advantages in that.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I think we can easily take
out the word. I think we can also put in something about
encouraging PBS to bring in.
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CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes, we can do that very
easily.
MS. STRAUSS: I want to add one more point about
the age groups that we're talking about. I've heard a lot
about preschoolers and as a parent of both a preschooler
and a teenager I can tell you that actually I'm pretty
satisfied with what's out there for preschoolers. It may
have been a little better, I admit, a little while back.
But I still think that there's a significant amount of
choice.
There is nothing for teenagers. There's
absolutely nothing. The point, Peggy, about news for
teenagers, especially given what's gone on in this country
over the last ten months -- I turn off the news rather
than leave it on and let them hear some of the things that
are being said over the mainstream news stations.
Not only that, but, as you pointed out, by the
time they turn 18 hardly any of them are voting. I would
like to see something in our final report addressing the
need for stations to address the needs of the teen years
in broadcasting, because it's just, it's absolutely not
being done anywhere.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: One of the things that we
might do here is to actually add another paragraph or at
least a couple more sentences on what we define as
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education.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Dawson's Creek doesn't fit?
MS. CHARREN: And neither does Melrose Place.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: That can certainly be
defining education here, as Charles said, to make sure
that we start with preschool and to emphasize lifelong
learning. I think we can also say this goes well beyond
classroom education and includes public education, it
includes public affairs education. It ought to show in
any of these plans a commitment to covering all age groups
in different ways across the spectrum or it's not going to
be an acceptable plan.
MS. CHARREN: Ethnic, racial.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes.
MS. SOHN: I had drafted just such language,
anticipating that. That had been my concern, is the
narrowness of the definition, although there's different
ways to skin the cat. It appears to me from discussions
I've had outside this committee, in the committee, that
what's missing from public broadcasting or what's being
underserved in public broadcasting is programming that's
targeted to underserved communities, independently
produced programming, and local and national public
affairs programming.
Now, I'd like to see the definition expanded to
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include that. In the alternative we could, because we're
giving public broadcasting a pot of money, ask them to do
program streams dedicated to any one or a number of those
three areas that I just mentioned. So there are several
ways to skin the cat, but it seems to me that I've got
what PBS submitted to us in January, or was it December.
They're planning on doing oodles and oodles and oodles of
classroom learning stuff. That does not seem to be what's
missing. It may be missing now, but it doesn't seem to be
what's going to be missing in the digital era.
But what I didn't see any discussion of in PBS
or ABS materials is increasing programming to underserved
communities and independently produced programming.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Well, we'll certainly
redefine. I think part of what is going to happen on this
channel is data transmission to classrooms, which can be a
very, very useful thing.
One last comment.
MR. RUIZ: Just one more thing. I would hope
you would consider with the analog system, if it is given
to them, a must-carry of ITV on the analog system.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: A must-carry for what?
MR. RUIZ: ITV, educational television. Right
now educational television has to pay local stations to
put on the educational programming to simply put it in the
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classroom, and they don't have the money, either. The
state department of education has to have the money. So
if you're going to get them an analog system then I think
they must carry that ITV coming down from the state.
Is that all right, Peggy?
MS. CHARREN: Oh, sure. They need enough money
to make that whole thing work.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: The last couple of comments,
Charles and Paul.
MR. BENTON: We are at a crucial point here. In
my judgment, and this may sound a bit harsh, but there is
neither the leadership nor the commitment at the national
level here at PBS, perhaps a little bit more so with CPB
but certainly not PBS, to do the education job. But where
the real challenge lies here is not with the national
organizations, but with local public television
broadcasters, public and educational broadcasters.
The process that you outline at the bottom of
page 4 and the top of page 5 is exactly right on. In
fact, this notion of a local public telecommunications
cooperative and consortium and reaching out to other
organizations in a systematic way to infuse, as Jim Yee is
urging us, new thinking and new talent, to address the
challenge of education, broadly defined -- and I have no
problem with a broad definition of education which
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includes, at the top of page, that the FCC "should pay
particular attention to how these stations would propose
to serve underprivileged and minority communities that
have typically less access to the educational
opportunities present in the information age," I think
that wording is most appropriate.
So the issue here is to create a structure that
is going to encourage and in fact motivate the leaders at
the local level in public telecommunications to get
together with their community leaders and begin to build a
new infrastructure that can use this extra permanent 6
megahertz.
This is going to be done, this job will be done,
at the local level. Some national leadership would
certainly be useful, but this is quintessentially a local
challenge. And the way this is written reflects that and
the understanding of that, so I think we've got to be
clear about this.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Paul.
MR. LA CAMERA: I would just add that I would
really caution you, don't broaden the language so far on
educational programming that it becomes so burdensome that
public broadcasting doesn't say, no, thank you, you're
asking too much and offering too little for us to
accomplish this. To me that's very important.
90
MS. CHARREN: One more thing. This piece of
spectrum that causes Congress to think that they don't
need to fund the other piece of public broadcasting
spectrum, which is a politically attractive idea to some -
-
MR. BENTON: That's key, that's key. That's why
it's got to be defined very specifically. Don't throw in
the kitchen sink.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: We'll make that explicit,
too.
We'll take a 15-minute break and then we will
come back and move on. Before you go, I did want to
mention something that I neglected to mention right at the
beginning, which is that the breakfast that was provided
this morning and the lunch are courtesy of Charles Benton.
(Recess from 11:04 a.m. to 11:41 a.m.)
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let's reconvene our
proceedings so we can expedite our procedures in order to
have lunch on time.
Let's move on to the next area, which is the
voluntary standards of conduct. Now, I don't think we
need to spend much time on this, in part because at our
last meeting in Minneapolis we had a full and frank airing
of views on this subject, to a point where many believed
that this was the only thing we were considering. And as
91
we can see, it's obviously not, although a significant
piece.
We have here language that basically suggests
our overall belief that we should start with a voluntary
set of standards, that we had them in the past, that we
can satisfy the antitrust objections that resulted
ultimately in the consent decree that caused the
withdrawal of a code, and move to something that fits the
digital age, and we suggest here that we simply include in
an appendix the model code based on the 1952 code that
Cass and his subgroup put together, along with, for
comparison purposes, the statement of principles that had
been adopted by the board of directors of the NAB to
replace the old code.
So that's what we have now and let's open this
up for any discussion that people have. Shelby.
MS. SCOTT: Because I was not with you in
Minneapolis and tried to from Switzerland hear you on the
phone, which kept cutting in and out --
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes, we have abject
apologies for our technical failures, by the way.
MS. SCOTT: That's the Swiss telephone company.
We can't blame Ma Bell for this one, I guess.
The funny part is, the meetings I was attending
in Switzerland, the attorney for the NAB was there. So I
92
talked to him after the telephone call and asked him. He
said that they're not in the least interested. Now,
that's just one attorney speaking for the NAB.
But you know, it would be great if we went back
to that, because it worked in some places and didn't work
in others, but it worked better than what's happening
today after the code. But I just, I can't buy this. I
don't think it's enough.
MS. CHARREN: You don't think it's enough?
spectrum.
MS. SCOTT: I don't think it'll happen. I don't
think there will be a voluntary code. Therefore I think
we should do something else. It would be great if it
would, but from my conversations they're just not
interested.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: So when you say there should
be something more --
MS. SCOTT: And I hate stiff regulatory stuff,
too. It just, it's horrible, but broadcasters have failed
to serve the public interest in many areas of our country,
especially on the local level. I mean, there are issues
going on in many cities and towns now that get no coverage
on the news. They don't have public service programming
very often in many stations. So those issues are not
brought to the local community.
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I think we're failing local communities all
across the country. That's why I'd like to see us do a
little more than a voluntary code of conduct that probably
will not be adopted.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Jim.
MR. GOODMON: I'm coming at this from a positive
point of view, not from a broadcasting is terrible and
we've got to bring out the police department here to do
something about it. We saw from the NAB report about all
the work all the stations are doing all over the country.
The proposal that's in the full -- can I talk
about that now? Is that okay? My notion is and has been
that there should be a minimum level of public interest
responsibilities for stations, and I have suggested what
they should be, and this is different from my first
suggestion in that I took out numbers and things.
I'm just trying to see if we can agree that
there should be minimum standards and it should be in
these areas, and somebody else can work on how many PSA's
or whatever. But I think that it makes a lot of sense for
us to have minimum standards and then on top of that have
a voluntary code.
I also think, Shelby, that if the NAB doesn't
want the do the code we need to figure out some other
organization to do the code. I don't know who that would
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be, but I don't want to give up on the notion of a code
whether we have minimum standards or not. I think we
ought to stay with that and I said that at the first
meeting. We passed out the old code. I mean, I think
where we're really going to make progress is with the
code.
The minimum standards that we're proposing most
folks are doing anyhow. So I'd like to see us have
minimum standards minimum standards. I'd like to see us
adopt this proposal. How do I do that?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let's do this. Let's put
this on the table now, because certainly the questions of
minimum standards and the code are related. Let's discuss
it further and then we'll figure out what procedure to
follow.
MR. RUIZ: There is an August 10th letter from
Charles Benton. Were any of these points ever confirmed?
He asked for some information from the NAB, stuff like
that. Where does the NAB stand on this?
Are you familiar with the letter?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let me go back and see what
part of the letter you're referring to.
MR. BENTON: It was on the first page, code of
conduct. I can do it briefly if you like. I say:
"Before we are asked to comment on the code again, I
95
request...should receive the following statistics: number
one, what percentage of commercial and noncommercial
broadcasters belong to the NAB; and two, what percentage
of NAB members subscribe to the old code."
I just think from a factual point of view we
need to understand these facts before understanding the
role of voluntarism versus other means of developing
minimum standards, and the NAB seems to be very silent on
these points. I think we really need to hear from the NAB
to understand where they are, what their position is on
all of this, and we really need to understand this.
Otherwise, I agree with Jim, if they're not
going to be responsive then let's try to find some other
body that will.
MS. SOHN: I'll tell you why I support minimum
standards. This is very thoughtful, Jim. I'm glad you
took out the numbers. I think the numbers are kind of --
they're not as relevant as the principle.
I'll support a code, but only with some minimum
standards. I agree with Jim that the voluntary code
should be something above and beyond what a minimum
standard is. And as I think I've said ad nauseam, the
reason we have minimum standards is so that the bad
broadcasters can rise to a level in which they deserve to
have a license. All the broadcasters around this table
96
and others in this room, the minimum standards are not
going to hurt them because they already do it. But
everybody should have to do something to maintain a
license. So that's number one.
The second reason why I think minimum
requirements is important is because -- I'm probably
jumping the gun here, but I think one of the single most
important things that we may do here in this Advisory
Committee is put forth this pay or play model, and if you
don't make it worthwhile to pay everybody will play.
Right now you don't have to do a whole heck of a lot to
play, so nobody's going to pay.
So if we really, really care about a pay or play
model and funding good things -- public broadcasting,
noncommercial programming, blah, blah, blah -- then we
have to make it meaningful to play, and that's why I think
you need some sort of mandated minimums.
MR. DILLER: Mr. Chairman.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes.
MR. DILLER: I agree with Mr. Goodmon. I think
that there should be minimum guidelines, minimum
standards, because there has to be a code of conduct, and
if the NAB won't do it it should be done astride them.
What a horrible thought.
I also think that it should apply to cable as
97
well as broadcast. I think there should be one code of
conduct for broadcasters. There must be minimum
guidelines for public interest, that are public interest
responsibilities. I've always believed that what
broadcasters should do is to say, to pledge what it is
they are going to do to acquit those responsibilities,
because some broadcasters have talents in one area and
interests in others, and that there should be flexibility
for that. They should say, this is what we intend to
provide to acquit these responsibilities, and then they
simply should be judged as to whether or not they've met
them in some simple test or form, and if they haven't why,
and a process for correcting it.
That has to be at least the minimum standard for
a free license to use the airwaves. And it must be
coupled with a rational code. Those two in tandem will
take care of much, not all -- it can't happen, all, but
much - of what has been discussed already this morning.
I would simply say, relative to Mr. Goodmon
saying, okay, how do I get this done, that we should talk
about it a bit more and resolve to do it and make it be
clear in its language and try and take the leadership to
actually get it done, hopefully with the NAB and, if not,
then without them.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes, Bill.
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MR. DUHAMEL: One of the things that Cass had
stressed is this had to be a voluntary code. He said if
there is coercion there are some significant legal
problems that this would raise, because, remember, he had
that quite extensive discussion that the key word is
"voluntary" in this.
I recall Gigi and I had an exchange over the
deal about real teeth in the voluntary code. I think
there is a significant legal problem here that we have to
at least be aware of.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes, Newt Minow.
MR. MINOW: I agree with Jim Goodmon and with
Barry Diller, and I also emphatically, and I've said this
before and I just want to repeat it, it should apply to
cable as well. It's got to be across the board.
MR. LA CAMERA: What's the practicality of
applying any of this to cable and what does that mean?
Who does it apply to in cable? Is it the national
channels? Is it the distribution systems?
MR. DILLER: It's to the programmers.
MR. LA CAMERA: So this would apply to HBO?
MR. DILLER: Absolutely.
MR. LA CAMERA: Is that again within our realm
and responsibility?
MS. STRAUSS: It's not within our
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responsibilities, but we could put anything we want into
the report. But technically, no, it's not within our
charge.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Our charge is digital
television broadcasters. But as a body that can make
recommendations, we presumably can make any
recommendations we want and they will be taken into
account by appropriate bodies accordingly. So it's
certainly not outside our authority if we want to suggest
that anything that we're doing with regard to the public
interest that applies to broadcasters also apply to cable
and apply to satellite. Certainly that's there.
But it does raise tricky questions, obviously,
in terms of implementation. But that's another issue that
we don't even have to spend a lot of time on.
Yes, Frank.
MR. BLYTHE: The voluntary code here is well
written. I thank Jim for his efforts in this area, too.
What jumps out at me in all the documents that I've read
here in the last couple of weeks is that the issues of
accountability and enforcement in the code situation,
everything seems to be that we don't want to place an
undue burden on broadcasters, we should have some minimum
standards, it should all be voluntary, and then makes
recommendations on how that would happen.
100
I'm just looking in terms of what Shelby's
comments are, that some things won't happen if it's
voluntary and how is the accountability factor and the
compliance factor or the enforcement factor being
developed and written into some of the recommendations.
I think we should see very strong language in
those areas.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Frank.
MR. CRUZ: I couldn't agree with you more. I
quite understand the limitations of our charge here, but
in many ways to hold public interest obligations solely on
digital broadcasting does not make for a level playing
field, and I think if there were recognition that it
should apply to the cable industry I would wholeheartedly
endorse that.
Kudos here to Jim for the minimum standards
here. The only thing that I would like to add to it would
be that we insert, if at all possible, in his all the way
A through J, perhaps something that pertains to employment
opportunities for women and minorities, encouraging that
as a minimal standard, because if we did away with that it
seems to me, given the massive amount of explosion that
can occur in reference to the future of the digital era,
we would be remiss not to mention that and not to
encourage those kinds of opportunities.
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Entrepreneurship is another area. I think
certainly in terms of employment opportunities it should
be part and parcel of what broadcasters should consider.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Karen.
MS. STRAUSS: I also want to thank Jim for
putting together the minimum standards. As you know, I've
always since the beginning of this Commission agreed with
the concept of setting forth some minimum requirements,
because I do think that that was our charge, not to
suggest just voluntary requirements. I don't think that
Cass indicated that there would be any legal problems with
setting forth minimum requirements. There may have been
some legal issues that arose with respect to some of the
items that we were putting forth on providing free time or
providing free political access, et cetera. But to the
best of my knowledge, there are no legal restraints to
putting forth minimum requirements.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Let me just voice an
objection here or a concern, and I'm not even dealing with
the legality. Obviously, this is a point that, I agree
with Barry, the NAB will not be part of this. They will
not be part of a group of minimum requirements. We can
put down all the requirements we want. The broadcasters,
unless there is an act of Congress or the FCC, will not
pay attention to the minimum requirements.
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If there is in fact a voluntary code that we can
in fact get the broadcasters to embrace, I think we have a
better opportunity of getting something accomplished here.
We can write whatever we want. We can write you need to
put one PSA per half hour prime time network television,
you can do whatever you want, three hours of public
interest programming, you can write whatever you want.
You can make this document as strong and tie it as tight
as you would like. The NAB will say they're not going to
be part of it.
That may be fine. You may want to ignore them.
But so will many broadcasters. If in fact we can get
something where the NAB will in fact embrace it, or some
other organization, I think we have a better opportunity
of getting something accomplished that will in fact be
done.
MS. STRAUSS: Has there been any indication to
date?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: About what?
MS. STRAUSS: Of how the NAB will receive our
document?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I do not know. I do not
know. I honestly do not know.
MR. CRUZ: It strikes me that the NAB, as
diligent as they are in sending us information -- I know I
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was the topic if Louis Weinrich on the last one in terms
of some of the concerns that he had with public
broadcasting. If they had been as diligent as they have
been in the past nigh these many months that we've been
meeting, why should they have not responded by now? I'm
not asking you, but generally speaking.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I don't know.
MR. CRUZ: What is their perspective on this?
MR. LA CAMERA: From what I understand, the
television board met and discussed this issue of a
resurrection of the voluntary standards. There was quite
substantive and heated discussion on the issue and I
think, at the urging of the representatives on that board
of CBS, Belo Broadcasting, and Heart-Argyle Television,
those three individuals persuaded the board to postpone
any further discussion or consideration and maintain an
open mind until they saw the final document. I think
that's where it stands.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Peggy, then Gigi.
MS. CHARREN: In the front where it talks about
must-carry, I agree that's a nice mandatory requirement,
but it's subject to a lot of concern in the marketplace,
all these channels. I would like to -- I mean, you're
talking about must carry all the signals?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Right.
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MS. CHARREN: Should that fail because of
pressure from cable not to carry all those signals, which
could be a lot of signals, I'd like to make some reference
to the idea that at the very least they should be carrying
public broadcasting signals, which I think are a special
case. On the one hand, that might undermine what you're
trying to say here, but I think that if you do away with
must-carry and then we don't carry public television,
we're doing in the needs of the American public.
MR. DILLER: If you do not have must-carry, then
everything you have discussed today is academic. So you
either have must-carry for the digital spectrum or all of
you should go home and forget about any further
deliberations, because they will be meaningless.
MS. CHARREN: Do you think that that's going to
happen?
MR. DILLER: It either happens or you don't
happen.
MS. CHARREN: Okay.
MR. DILLER: And to split off -- excuse me. To
have a concept of splitting off must-carry for public
television and not for commercial broadcasting is, by the
way, to send the biggest death knell to commercial
broadcasting through any other act you could possibly do.
It's extraordinarily dangerous.
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MS. CHARREN: Well, then if it's extraordinarily
important, if it's extraordinarily important, there should
be some way to highlight that as extraordinarily
important, because it's going to be tough.
MR. DILLER: I mean, for sure, without must-
carry it's all toast.
MS. CHARREN: Well, then I think we should spend
a little more time explaining that.
MR. DILLER: Is it not self-evident?
MS. CHARREN: Well, defending it --
MS. SOHN: It's a little bit more nuanced than
that. But I do want to make one point about must-carry,
is that under no circumstances do I think we should
support must-carry without minimum standards. What do you
think about that, Mr. Diller?
MR. DILLER: I think that's fine.
MS. SOHN: All right.
MR. DILLER: Of course that's fine.
MS. SOHN: But it's a little bit more nuanced
than that. The big must-carry issue -- and people I'm
sure will feel free to correct me if they want -- is
during the transition period, because the law is kind of
ambiguous. It's not ambiguous as to whether cable
operators have to carry broadcasters after the transition,
though some cable operators probably want to hang me right
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now. I think the law is quite clear that after the
transition is over they must be carried.
So the difficult period is in the transition
period between when people start carrying the signals and
when they give the analog spectrum back. The question
there is should broadcasters have to carry both the analog
and the digital, one or the other, should they let the
broadcaster choose?
The FCC has come out with this menu of options,
and the broadcasters I believe -- again, correct me if I'm
wrong, but they want both carriage of the analog and the
digital signal during the transition period.
MS. CHARREN: That's what I meant. That's the
period I'm talking about.
MR. CRUMP: Let's not forget that that is one of
the most important things that we can do, because what's
driving all of this when we get to the digital signal that
we're putting out and we're going to the point where we're
going to give the analog channel back, we're looking at an
85 percent penetration of the market. That is, that we
must have that many sets sold out there, and if indeed all
those folks who are on cable cannot get the digital signal
then it's just going to delay this year after year and
what we're putting in this report of all the things we
would like to have done at that particular point is just
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being put off almost forever, but certainly past the
immediate future. To me that's counterproductive.
MR. RUIZ: I'd like to hear from the
broadcasters on how to proceed from this point on,
especially the ones that haven't had any involvement in
raising this, because two months have passed. I believe,
Norm, you made the suggestion that we accept the
commitment from the NAB, and then there was a question as
to whether there was any commitment from that leadership,
and it didn't seem to progress any in this area.
What do we need to do to move this forward?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let me make some -- Newton
wanted to say something.
MR. MINOW: I think the justification for must-
carry presumes that what you're carrying serves the public
interest.
MR. GOODMON: Exactly.
MR. MINOW: So I think what you do is tie
together the Jim Goodmon minimum public interest
requirement as a condition of must-carry.
MR. LA CAMERA: Absolutely.
MR. GOODMON: That's the whole rationale.
MR. CRUZ: Norm.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Frank.
MR. CRUZ: The submission that I sent to all the
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members of the Commission, although it pointed to public
broadcasting and the reasons why there must be must-carry
for public broadcasting, we also had in there that the
committee should endorse must-carry rules for public
broadcasting, and that should be the core work of this
committee.
We've outlined some of the reasons why. I think
many of you have indicated -- the minimum standards I
think would be very much needed. I've outlined in my
presentation to you about four or five or six reasons --
five reasons -- as to why it is applicable, must-carry, to
public. But I'm sure that logic and that thinking is
applicable mostly to commercial broadcasting.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let me raise just a series
of challenges we have here. This is obviously difficult.
My strong preference as a co-chair of this body is, where
we can, to avoid issues where we draw a line in the dust
and we have a lot of broadcasters on one side and a lot of
other people, including some broadcasters, on the other if
we can avoid it.
I'd like to avoid a confrontation with the
industry if we can, because I think in the end the
likelihood is that that's not productive. It may not
work. I'd like to see if we can explore these ways in
which we can achieve these goals without drawing that
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sharp line in the dust, and it may or may not be possible.
There's also the issue that Bill raised, which
is a real issue. If we are talking about a voluntary
code, it cannot be implicitly coercive coming from a
governmental body. So we cannot in our recommendations
say the NAB should adopt a voluntary code, and we cannot
say as a body: And if they don't, then we're going to
come down hard on them.
Now, there are ways to get around that or ways
to deal with that particular issue. Certainly one thing
we can suggest is that a set of standards be adopted by
the NAB and, whether the NAB adopts standards or not, that
an outside group, the equivalent of a News Council, be
created through private support to do its own code and to
do its own monitoring of stations. If that's not made
contingent on what any other organization does, that's not
coercive, and that's one thing we can recommend as a part
of what we're doing.
At the same time, we have a question of whether
we want to have a separate recommendation for minimum
standards or whether we want to incorporate minimum
standards into a code and put it out there as something
that can be adopted by either or both organizations.
So there may be ways at least of getting around
some of this obvious disagreement.
110
Yes, Peggy.
MS. CHARREN: I think that the whole idea of
minimum requirements is a ruling. I mean, you have to do
that. That's not voluntary. That's the difference
between this and the voluntary code. If this is going to
work, I think you have to do it --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: You have to do it? You have
to do it. Are you in Congress? Are you passing a law?
MS. CHARREN: Well, I'm saying this is a
recommendation.
MS. SOHN: Right, it's a recommendation to the
FCC.
MS. CHARREN: Right. You could take the
position that nothing we're going to do is going to happen
in the real world, and then you don't have to meet at all.
The fact is we have to say something that's worth doing,
and that's worth doing.
MR. GOODMON: I've thought a lot about the FCC
versus the Congress. You know, many of us used to have
two or three people and all they did was count the
percentage we used to have in news, children,
entertainment, non-entertainment. I think that a lot of
broadcasters are worried that, okay, well, wait a minute.
All right, we do this, this is okay; but this is the
beginning of a -- if it's this this year, it will be more
111
next year; we're getting something started and we're very
much against that.
And we have talked about whether these minimum
standards should come from Congress or whether the FCC --
it changes it every time there's a new FCC as an issue.
But I think the main concern is that we're getting
something started here that will get us back to where we
used to be. So how can we work on that problem? How can
we work on that?
I don't think there's such a thing as the
broadcasters. There is big companies, there is little
companies. We all have different ideas, we all have
different views. There are as many views on the NAB board
as there are people on the NAB board.
My notion is that we were charged with the
responsibility of coming up with a reasonable public
policy for these digital licenses, and I think it is very
reasonable to say that every digital station should have
some minimum standards, not none.
MS. CHARREN: For who to say it, Jim?
MR. GOODMON: For the Commission or Congress or
whoever says it.
MS. CHARREN: Right.
MR. GOODMON: And that we ought to recommend
that there be minimum standards and a voluntary code on
112
top of that, giving the broadcasters as much flexibility
as possible in how they meet it, recognizing the First
Amendment rights of everybody involved, including the
public, and moving ahead. It seems to me that that makes
a lot of sense in terms of what's reasonable public
policy.
MR. LA CAMERA: From my understanding, this is
exactly what the hierarchy within the National Association
of Broadcasters was concerned with, that this voluntary
code would evolve at some point into minimum standards.
Well, we seem to be there, to have anticipated that. Why
did we put Cass through this exercise?
MS. SOHN: Why are we mushing this together?
We're talking about two separate things. I think some
people are trying to jumble it. We're talking about a
voluntary code. I like this code. Cass did a great job.
But it's worthless in my mind, okay, it's a worthless
exercise, unless there are some separate minimum standards
as well.
It's separate. They're not together. I'm not
talking about any coercive language in the voluntary code.
MR. DILLER: Where would they not parallel each
other?
MS. SOHN: They could, they very much could.
I'm not saying they wouldn't.
113
MR. DILLER: Where would you say they wouldn't?
MS. SOHN: I would think the voluntary -- well,
go ahead. I'm sorry.
MS. STRAUSS: The voluntary code, if you look at
what's covered in the voluntary code, it goes way beyond
these minimum standards. It covers the treatment of news.
it covers responsibilities towards children, covering
elections. It's very specific. It's very specific
guidance on programming options. The minimum standards
are much more global.
So I think there's room definitely for both.
And when I said before that there are no legal issues --
MR. DILLER: They're not mutually -- in other
words, they don't contradict each other? When one extends
--
MS. STRAUSS: We can make sure that they don't.
MR. DILLER: So long as they don't contradict
each other, and since it's going to be clear that there
are some things you can mandate and some things you can
only have by kind of the coercion of voluntarism, why not
keep them separate, in which case you can end the debate -
-
MS. STRAUSS: Right.
MR. DILLER: -- and move on and resolve it.
MS. STRAUSS: Right. I think that they are
114
separate. They're separate now. I think the question
here is whether anybody -- whether there's a consensus
that, in addition to the voluntary code, there should be
these minimum standards.
MR. DILLER: There's no question about that.
MS. STRAUSS: Well, there's no question to you
and I and to several other people.
(Laughter.)
MS. SOHN: But that's a serious thing. Looking
around the table, I'm not hearing a lot of dissent.
You're talking about that there's a lot of dissent. I'm
hearing more people in favor than against.
MS. STRAUSS: So we can find out if there's a
consensus.
MR. DILLER: What a shocking thought.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: There will be a dissenting
opinion on this piece.
MR. DILLER: So why don't we hear it. Why don't
we hear it so that it can be exposed and understood and
heard.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: You've heard it. There are
people --
MR. LA CAMERA: Robert Decherd articulated it at
the last meeting.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Right.
115
MR. LA CAMERA: That within the larger
broadcasting, the contemporary broadcasting community
today, ascertained through the National Association of
Broadcasters, there is no interest in the assumption or
resurrection of minimum standards.
MR. DILLER: Any kind of minimum standards?
MR. LA CAMERA: I'm sorry, I don't sit on the
NAB board.
MR. DILLER: I know. I'm just asking. I'm
sorry.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Barry, there are certain
broadcasters, there's a large portion of them, there are a
lot of them --
MR. DILLER: No minimum standards?
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: -- who feel the word
"mandatory," anything that is mandatory, is objectionable.
MR. LA CAMERA: No matter what it is.
MR. DILLER: Well --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Obviously, you disagree and
that's fine. But there are certain people who feel that
way.
MR. DILLER: I wonder how they would feel if it
was coupled with mandatory must-carry.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Must-carry, that's a good
question.
116
MS. STRAUSS: That's a great selling point with
the minimum standards. Most of the people with
representations around this table already meet those
minimum standards.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I would venture to say
everybody who is at this table meets these minimums.
MS. STRAUSS: Well, I don't have a station.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: No. Everybody sitting at
this table. But once again, it's the good broadcaster
versus the bad broadcaster.
MS. CHARREN: But we don't have much leverage on
service and we do have must-carry as leverage, and if we
don't use that, I mean, what are we doing here? If you
say that the reason that we want people to carry channels
is because that is the way you serve the public, if
there's no mandatory requirement you could feel that
that's not true, I mean that they're not going to serve
the public.
MR. DILLER: I can't imagine that in the end
reasonable minimal standards for broadcasters would be
objected to by broadcasters.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Barry, you should have been
at the last board meeting.
MR. DILLER: I just think it's reasonable --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Hold it. Barry, at the last
117
board meeting of the NAB they objected to the word
"voluntary." I wasn't there, but this is what was
reported back.
MR. DILLER: I don't know.
MR. GOODMON: Here's what I'm really trying to
do. I keep calling myself a moderate for this reason. We
have Mr. Decherd, who makes a very good presentation on
the free market, that the free market is the best way to
serve the public because the public will tell you, if they
watch it or if they don't watch it. And then we have Mr.
Minow announcing that he really loves the free market and
he would like to auction my station off, and I'm saying,
hold it a minute.
Do we really want to have this argument? The
government is issuing to us a license that is very
valuable. For the government to suggest to us that we
have some responsibilities in terms of getting that
license is very reasonable. As a matter of fact, I would
suggest they are negligent of they give away this very
valuable public resource and tell us to go out and do
whatever the hell we want to do.
What I'm trying to do is come up with some
minimum standards to give stations all the flexibility in
the world in terms of what they do, and then for the rest
of this stuff we put a code on it, and then we'll move on
118
and argue about important stuff like must-carry, because
with 65 percent of the homes on cable, Peggy, you're never
going to get your public interest channel on cable -- 67
percent.
MS. CHARREN: I agree. I'm not arguing with
you.
MR. GOODMON: If we don't get on cable, we can
do all the public interest stuff we want and nobody's
going to see it.
MS. CHARREN: I agree with that 100 percent.
MR. GOODMON: I'm trying to take a middle
position, not a pro-regulatory, anti-First Amendment. I'm
just trying to be pragmatic about the reality.
MS. CHARREN: I'm not arguing about --
MS. SOHN: You're very reasonable.
MS. CHARREN: I think you're very reasonable.
You misunderstood what I was saying.
MS. SOHN: Maybe it's line-drawing time. I
don't know.
MR. DILLER: It's a rational minimum.
MS. SOHN: Right.
MS. CHARREN: I want that to happen.
MR. DILLER: It's a rational minimum.
MR. LA CAMERA: That's fine, but then be totally
realistic and understand that this effort on a voluntary
119
code of conduct with the National Association of
Broadcasters is never going to happen --
MS. SOHN: Well, we didn't think it was going to
happen anyways.
MS. CHARREN: I agree with that.
MR. LA CAMERA: If you also include with that
minimum mandatory standards, there is just no hope for it.
And that's fine if that's the direction you want to go in.
But don't expect both.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Accepting the fact that there
probably will be dissent on this issue, which I think is
clear, and that's okay, are there further suggestions on
the mandatory requirements that you have? In other words,
should a station in New York City have the same
requirements as the station that Bill Duhamel has? I
mean, are we going to go that far? I mean, how far do you
want to go with this?
MR. DUHAMEL: There's one point that we talk
about --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Wait, wait. Yes?
MR. GOODMON: I took out of here numbers for
that very reason. Basically, I said, first of all,
whether we have minimum standards or not, we've got to
work on accountability and reporting. It's very difficult
to tell what a TV station is doing, and I don't have
120
specifically what that is.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: That rolls right into
ascertainment.
MR. GOODMON: Then we did the ascertainment,
public service announcements. It didn't say how many, but
the emphasis on public service announcements and public
affairs programming is local. The reason we have these
stations is to serve the local community. And then the
multicasting and must-carry. I put political time in
here. I'm sorry I did because that's --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: That's a separate issue.
MR. GOODMON: But the point I've made is it
seems reasonable to me to require stations to provide
program time for the discussion of candidates, but it
doesn't seem reasonable to require stations to give free
commercial time. And I tried to define that so it would
include your 5-minute idea or 30-minute idea or whatever
minutes anybody had in terms of programming. But I said
stay away from giving candidates free commercial time to
any extent, and I also suggested we try to make the lowest
unit rate so it's understandable.
I just tried to stay really --
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: General.
MR. GOODMON: Yes.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Bill?
121
MR. DUHAMEL: The only thing that bugs me -- and
Jim's right, he did take the deal out. It was Gigi's that
I was thinking of.
But there still is the problem in the small
markets that I raised before, that we had a news show, a
public affairs show, we had it on for 30 years and it was
dying. And by changing it to a news program with two 5-
minute public affairs interviews daily in that, we have
increased the audience five times.
I mean, to come out and just say you've got to
have a half-hour show that nobody's going to watch --
MR. GOODMON: I don't think anybody's suggesting
that. I don't think that was contained in the suggestion.
MR. DILLER: So that the debate is onto the
point, and it often goes awry on those kinds of
differentiations, Mr. Goodmon's suggestions do not have
that kind of specificity, and I think you must allow
broadcasters flexibility to provide their public interest
obligations in these varying parts in ways that are full
but flexible, because some, as you say, some have much
better ideas to do things that have more of a tuning fork
frequency with the public than any written series of
obligations which probably won't. It's not that hard to
judge whether or not in fact you're meeting minimum
requirements. It's not a hard test.
122
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Newt had a comment, and then
Peggy and then Gigi.
MR. MINOW: This might not be helpful, but if
the NAB says we don't even want a voluntary code, maybe we
don't want to have a voluntary exclusive license for
channels. Maybe we don't want to have must-carry. Think
about that.
MS. CHARREN: You don't mean this, you don't
mean this to do in legislative mandates like three hours
of children's television?
MS. STRAUSS: No, that's separate.
MS. CHARREN: But if somebody raised this they
could think that.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: That's already in the books.
That's there.
MS. STRAUSS: Closed captioning and children's
programming is separate. That's already there.
MS. CHARREN: You ought to say that and have a
sentence that there are some things that are already
there.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: It's very easy to make clear
that this is not to the exclusion of anything else.
MS. SOHN: Let me defend myself against Bill. I
don't care that much about the numbers and I'm perfectly
happy to make a recommendation to the FCC for them to use
123
their expertise as the expert agency to determine what the
numbers are. And I'm very, very, very, very for giving
broadcasters flexibility in determining how they should
meet the requirements. So we don't even have to discuss
this part of my proposal if we indeed decide that some
minimum requirements are a good thing.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Let me make a suggestion
here. It seems to me the best way for us to proceed is
that when we're done here that we'll pull together a small
sub-group that can go over Jim's language, see if it fits,
if it ought to be massaged a little bit, and that we pull
together a recommendation that basically couples minimum
standards with the must-carry, and that we have a separate
recommendation along the lines of what we have here for a
code.
If you want, we can include a couple of
sentences saying, whatever the NAB does, we encourage
other organizations to draft their own standards, and that
we then put it out to the members and see what reaction we
get, recognizing that we will get a strong dissent and
that it's going to have broader repercussions, but that
that's the best way for us to go forward, and that we take
members who represent a range of perspectives to try and
go through this and make sure we have the best possible
recommendation.
124
I would also suggest that as you do this,
instead of just saying Congress or the FCC, that we ought
to work through who ought to be doing this, rather than
just throwing it up in the air and just saying "jump
ball." I don't have an answer to that, but I think that
ought to be a consideration.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: You mean who we're turning
this paper in to?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: We ought to have a
recommendation that says the FCC should adopt minimum
standards.
MS. STRAUSS: Congress already said there are
public interest obligations.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I think we should give it to
whoever will read it.
(Laughter.)
MR. DILLER: How about mandatory reading?
(Laughter.)
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: In the few minutes we have
remaining before we break, there's another element of this
that we really ought to discuss which we have done, which
we set out as a separate one, and that is the question of
additional disclosure of information. My own judgment has
been that no voluntary set of standards works unless you
have a requirement that there's public disclosure of the
125
activities that stations are engaging in, and it ought to
be disclosure parallel to what in fact the NAB asked in
its survey of stations of the kinds of activities that
they were doing.
So let's throw that issue out there.
MR. GOODMON: Is that what we call
accountability?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: That's the disclosure of
public interest activities by broadcasters. That's the
next element in this draft of ours.
MR. DILLER: A simple clear checkoff once a year
-- simple, clean.
MR. LA CAMERA: I think this section is well
done. I think one component notion is missing here and
that's the role that this reporting plays as an important
self-audit for broadcasters. That concluding sentence on
page 7, "Greater availability of relevant information,"
"includes awareness, promote continuing dialogue between
digital television broadcaster and community," "and
provide an important self-audit to the broadcasters
themselves."
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: Okay.
MR. LA CAMERA: Because I think it does do that.
I think in many ways this is as important, this
section, as anything else that's in this document.
126
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: I agree with that.
Gigi.
MS. SOHN: If you recall, I submitted, working
actually with Barry's colleague Julius Jankowski, I
developed a certification, a checkout, exactly what he was
talking about, that would serve the purpose of disclosure.
Might I suggest, if people want to fix that, play with it,
we have maybe another subcommittee to work on that.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes. We have here, if you
notice the language, it says "One possible form using a
checkoff approach is included in the index." That
presumably was to work off of what you have been doing,
and I think it would make sense to refine that and keep
it, as Barry said, simple.
We want to get full information, but we want to
make it as un-onerous as possible for all stations.
MR. DUHAMEL: Why wasn't the appendix included?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: We'll work that out.
Basically, because we had our hands full coming up with
this language.
CO-CHAIR MOONVES: It's also because you can't
have a checkoff until you know what you're checking off.
MR. DUHAMEL: Oh, okay. So there isn't one.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: No. We had a draft of one,
but we haven't finalized that.
127
MS. SOHN: Would you like me to work on that?
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Yes.
MS. SOHN: And maybe if anybody wants to --
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Anybody else who wants to
participate, and obviously that includes in particular the
broadcasters.
MS. SOHN: Do you want to volunteer Julius?
MR. DILLER: He can volunteer himself. He's
sitting back there. Or he can say no.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: In his spare time.
MR. CRUMP: I think we need to keep in mind the
fact that this group is making recommendations. It's a
recommendation of what this group thinks should be done.
We're going to have people that will disagree with us,
organizations that will disagree with us, both in the
public service area and in the broadcasting area.
What we're supposed to be doing is creating a
situation whereby we're saying there are some standards
that we feel should be met by people who have these
licenses, and when we get down to something like how we're
going to report and so forth, I think we have to realize
again how the recommendation is received by the
individuals involved.
In this instance, they'll be all broadcasters.
A great deal of that will have to do with what their mind
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set is at the time. I think the fact that the NAB board
meeting previously held, where there was a great deal of
discussion and a great deal if dissent, that we were
asking them to some degree to say: Okay, yes, we're going
to be for this new code -- they didn't know what the
details were. Yes, we can be for this, and all of a
sudden here we've slipped them some things maybe they
didn't like.
Once we have put something out in writing and
say, we think you should consider this, we may find that
there are a large number of broadcasters and broadcasting
groups who will assume positions of leadership and say:
My God, there's nothing wrong with this; this is what we
should do.
Not only that. Depending upon the mind set that
you have, you can say: You know, I've been doing this for
all these years; maybe I haven't been getting the credit
for it that I should have had; and now they're saying I
should disclose this more to the public so I'm not in a
guilty position perhaps of patting myself on the back, I
am merely doing what they have suggested again in going
forward.
What I felt was good about the code in the old
days was the fact that broadcasters were really proud of
the fact that they did these things and they could talk
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about them, and they would say, yes. You've got critics
and we're going to have critics no matter what we do,
because I have never met people -- I have this trite
thinking in my own head. Not everyone is a lawyer, not
everyone is a doctor, but I've never met anyone who wasn't
a television producer, never in my life. They all know
what should be there, they all know what's wrong.
And hell, yes, we make a lot of mistakes, like
everybody else does. But if you're trying to do the right
thing and you're pushing along, then this is going to come
back to help you.
I really think what we're trying to do here or
what I would like to see us do is to tickle the
imagination of the broadcasters out there who are saying
that we're already doing it, but yes, we need to do more,
here we go, and give them some encouragement to go
forward, not batter them over the head and tell them, hey,
you know, you're in a bunch of bad guys and you're going
to have to take your lumps with the rest of them because
you haven't policed yourself.
We're not in a policing situation. We're
individual companies. I think we have an opportunity
here, if things are worded right, we put it out that what
we do is we provide some incentive and some encouragement
to the good guys to lead the way again.
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CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: That's a very good point.
Certainly the specifics of recommendations and the
language used to frame those recommendations are both
extraordinarily important. I hope at every turn that we
try to avoid the kind of language that would be
provocative where it would be unnecessary.
Given that, Harold, I hope you will help to
participate in the drafting of these recommendations if
possible, to keep us from doing that, recognizing that
anything is going to be inflammatory, that we do, will be
inflammatory to some. But we can try and minimize that.
MR. LA CAMERA: I think that's what you've
achieved, minimize that kind of language. And as we
advance this and alter this, I think you've got to be very
cautious not to cross that line.
MR. DILLER: But don't be unclear.
CO-CHAIR ORNSTEIN: Absolutely. As we go
forward, the shape of the report that you're going to have
is first going to emphasize, I hope, the areas in which we
have an overall and almost complete consensus, which will
be a very significant number of areas, I think, in quite
far-reaching ways.
Then we will, it seems clear, have an area or
two where there will be some significant dissent, and then
we will have other places where people can offer
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additional opinions and views, and that's probably an
appropriate way to go.
This may be a good break point. We can move on
this afternoon after our lunch period to the additional
areas of political discourse and a new approach, and then
also to consider Karen's proposal and the other things
that we have out there on the proposal that we haven't
gotten to yet.
(Whereupon, at 12:33 p.m., the committee was
recessed, to reconvene at 1:45 p.m. the same day.)