#########  REMARKS OF 

#### **COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS TO**

**NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS**

**RADIO SHOW**

**NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA**

**SEPTEMBER 7, 2001**

# 

Coming to New Orleans is coming home for me. This city, where I had the
pleasure of working for a few years and, more importantly, of courting
my wife, is one of my favorite places on earth, and I thank you for the
opportunity to come back and to spend some time with you yesterday and
today. It's probably a little early in the morning to cite the city's
motto \-- "*Laissez les bon temps rouler,*" or "Let the good times roll"
-- but some of you maybe got into that spirit last night. If not,
there's always tonight.

I grew up on radio and I still remember waking up every morning to Happy
Hank, broadcasting out of Chicago and brought to me by the good people
at Coco-Wheats, and racing my brother to see which of us would get our
bed made first as Happy Hank watched us through some kind of magic
telescope. In the afternoon, the ladies would listen to their radio
soaps, like the ongoing saga of Lorenzo Jones and his wife Belle. In the
evening came the Lone Ranger and Tom Mix. On weekends, there was The
Shadow with its creaking door and "what evil lurks in the hearts of
men." And I well remember my first immersion in late night election
returns in 1948, but I had to turn off the radio pretty early in those
days, so I went to sleep believing, like many others, that Thomas E.
Dewey was our next President. Some things never change \-- my youngest
kids went to bed this past election night thinking that Al Gore was
their new leader.

Many years have intervened, but I still spend a lot of time with radio.
For me it's more time than I spend with television, thanks to the
wonderful world of Washington commuting. So radio has been, for me, a
close and constant companion. But happy as those memories are, I don't
think about radio as a nostalgic trip down Memory Lane. I see it,
rather, as a major industry of the present, fulfilling a high and valued
public purpose. And I see it also as integral to our future \-- an
engine of growth and progress and enlightenment for us all.

It's a future that doesn't get talked about enough as we focus on the
new wonders of the Communications Revolution, with all its talk about
broadband and 3G, high definition television and interactive TV, e-mail
and palm pilots, satellites and wireless phones, and all the rest. Those
are all very important, but people need to realize that startling
changes are coming their way in radio, too.

I'm learning about digital radio. I'm new to that, but I think we're all
still in the learning stage. We know there is a digital future for
radio, but beyond that, I don't think any of us can paint the picture of
what exactly that digital future will look like. Is it just better
sound? Is it a myriad of new programming? How interactive is it? So the
digital future of radio is still in galleys, but if the history of
technology is any guide -- and I think it is -- then we know it will be
a story of exciting new opportunities, some of which we can't even
glimpse right now. I know that your industry engineers are hard at work
studying and testing new digital radio technologies and developing
proposed standards for them, and I congratulate everyone who is working
on that. It's exciting stuff and I am enthused about working with
industry over the coming months and years to move this exciting
transition forward.

My hope is that we will learn some lessons from our experiences thus far
with the transition to digital television. I understand that the radio
and television situations are in many ways very different -- different
spectrum challenges, different economics, different market conditions.
But there may still be some lessons to be learned about how something
like this is rolled out; at what pace; and with what consequences to the
various stakeholders involved, especially you in the business. Elemental
questions of supply and demand need to be tackled before milestones and
deadlines are established. There are more questions than answers. None
of them is easy, but about one thing I am clear: it is that we need to
work closely together every step of the way, in a spirit of true public
sector-private sector partnership, to make it happen. It took a lot of
work together to build radio service in the early part of the last
century, and I believe that kind of cooperative partnership will be
needed to make the tricky transition to digital radio.

So I am as excited about radio's future now as we were back in the days
of Happy Hank and Tom Mix and "People are Funny" and "You Bet Your
Life." There are tough problems and all kinds of challenges to be worked
through \-- issues of concern to you and to me and, most of all, to the
American people. But how could it be otherwise when we're talking about
an industry so important to all of us?

One huge issue coming our way at the "new" Commission is industry
consolidation. The Nineties brought new rules allowing increased
consolidation in the radio industry. In developing these rules, the
Commission concluded that broadcasters needed additional flexibility to
compete effectively. These rules changes paved the way for tremendous
consolidation in the industry. Many of you are now affiliated with
groups of dozens, even hundreds, of stations. More and more of your
programming originates outside of your station's studio. These changes
create efficiencies that allow you to operate more profitably and on a
scale unimaginable just a few years ago. But they also raise questions
about how far combination and consolidation should go; whether most of
the harvest-able efficiencies of consolidation have already been
harvested; how best to nurture a truly competitive environment;
questions about trends in diversity and the preservation of localism \--
virtues most Americans still hold dear; and questions, sensitive
questions, about the nature of programming itself. It's affected
everything. It even presents challenges to the way a great trade
association like the Broadcasters goes about its work.

Along with the increased opportunities and efficiencies that you have
witnessed come increased responsibilities to your communities. Now, as
throughout radio's long and distinguished history, most broadcasters are
good citizens of their communities. They take their obligations
seriously. And they work together, particularly through their NAB, to
preserve the values on which broadcasting was built. You can be proud of
the work you have done through the NAB.

I am a believer \-- a true believer \-- in the value of trade
associations. I worked for one, heading up its legislative and trade
departments. Few experiences in my professional life have been as
rewarding as seeing competitive business people come together to pursue
common objectives. There is just something about seeing the everyday
rivalries of the marketplace put temporarily aside, while common
industry objectives are pursued together, that makes me feel good about
our system of business and hopeful about our country's ability to meet
our public policy challenges.

About the only thing I get more excited about than this kind of business
cooperation is cooperation and partnership between our private sector
and the public sector. Those of you who worked with me during my eight
years at the Department of Commerce during the Clinton Administration
know how strongly I feel about this. There my effort was on building
cooperative business and government efforts to make America more
successful in the global economy. Across almost every sector of our
nation's enterprise, with information technologies and
telecommunications in the vanguard, government and business began, at
long last, to work together to implement aggressive new export promotion
and advocacy programs; to bring America's small and medium-size
enterprises into world markets; and to make us the world's greatest
exporter. Working together, through our Advocacy Center in the
International Trade Administration, we won contracts and deals overseas
that translated into \$71 billion of U.S. domestic content and probably
over 800,000 good, high-paying American jobs. During those eight years,
America increased its exports to nearly \$1 trillion a year.

I learned from this experience that in the global market we inhabit,
neither the private nor the public sector could get the job of trade
development done by itself. Business and government had both downsized;
each had fewer resources to throw into the fray; and our competitors in
the EU and Asia had already figured out that they had to work together
and they were on their way to cleaning our clock in the global
competition. So we worked together here at home, and when we joined
hands \-- public sector and private sector\-- things began to change.

What's all this got to do with your radio station or with my job at the
FCC? Actually, quite a lot, I believe. The Telecommunications and
Information Technology Revolution of our time knows no borders or
boundaries, any more than radio waves stop at the state line. Our
ability to succeed at home depends mightily on what happens far away
from home. And in this modern world of fast-moving technology, the
research and development and business strategies being hatched overseas
affect you just as much as what's happening at your competitor's station
across town.

But the kind of cooperation I am talking about today goes beyond just
working together in the global arena. It involves, first and foremost,
working together on the challenges we face here at home: fostering and
harnessing and applying new technologies, like digital; encouraging
competition; preserving the diversity of voices and choices; and
crafting public policies and regulatory regimes that address the public
interest without diminishing America's spirit of enterprise.

The radio industry and the federal government have a long history of
cooperation. In 1925, when Secretary Hoover convened the Fourth Radio
Conference, he could already acknowledge that "it was only by your
cooperation that the requirements of this great service could best be
met."

I want to help this partnering continue. I want to assist in bringing
people together to identify opportunities; to talk candidly about
problems and obstacles; and to develop common-sense solutions to advance
the common good.

As a FCC Commissioner, I have an obligation to work with the industry to
help ensure that licensees continue to serve their communities. When
radio licenses come up for renewal or for transfer, it is our obligation
under the Communications Act to make sure that the renewal or
transaction serves the public interest, convenience and necessity. I
take this obligation very seriously.

Now, the public interest is a broad concept. I believe that one
important component of the public interest is a vital and competitive
marketplace with regulatory certainty in business transactions and
fulfillment of Congress' vision of a more competitive and less regulated
industry.

Also in the public interest is the preservation of a diversity of
sources of programming in each community. Not just a variety of stations
and formats, because variety and diversity are not the same thing, but
diversity of ownership and diversity of programming reflecting the
increasing diversity of our society. Localism, avoidance of excessive
market power, an informed citizenry cognizant of the complexity and
diversity of positions on the issues of the day -- these, too, are
integral parts of the public interest.

I don't think mine is a particularly expansive view of the public
interest. After all, it wasn't Mike Copps who said: "...it becomes of
primary public interest to say who is to do the broadcasting, under what
circumstances, and with what type of material." That would have been
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover back in 1922 at the First Radio
Conference. It was also Hoover who said, "...we can surely agree that no
one can raise a cry of deprivation of free speech if he is compelled to
prove that there is something more than naked commercial selfishness in
his purpose."

Now I may not be as radical as Herbert Hoover, but the public interest
***is*** my lodestar as I begin to wrestle with all the many issues
coming before the Commission. I hope it will be similarly important to
all of you, because the same statute that obliges Kathleen and Kevin and
me to make sure that a license transaction or renewal serves the public
interest obliges you as broadcasters and public trustees to operate in
the public interest.

I've mentioned only a few of the matters of common interest that I hope
we can work on together. There are many others. In closing, I just want
to state again my strong conviction that industry and government can
best serve our common public interest goal when we come together, reason
together, work together. I came here this morning primarily to leave
this one point with you and to say how much I am looking forward to
working with you to make it happen.

Thank you.