In the Matter of: )

)

EN BANC HEARING ON THE PUBLIC )

INTEREST OBLIGATIONS OF TV )

BROADCAST LICENSES )

Pages: 1 through 251

Place: Washington, D.C.

Date: October 16, 2000

Before the

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20554

In the Matter of: )

)

EN BANC HEARING ON THE PUBLIC )

INTEREST OBLIGATIONS OF TV )

BROADCAST LICENSES )

Federal Communications

Commission

445 Twelfth Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

Monday,

October 16, 2000

The parties met, pursuant to the notice of the

Commission at 9:12 a.m.

APPEARANCES:

[On Behalf of the FCC]{.underline}:

WILLIAM KENNARD, CHAIRPERSON

SUSAN NESS, COMMISSIONER

HAROLD FURCHTGOTT-ROTH, COMMISSIONER

GLORIA TRISTANI, COMMISSIONER

MICHAEL K. POWELL, COMMISSIONER

[Panelists]{.underline}:

JAMES P. STEYER

ANNE SWEENEY

KATHRYN MONTGOMERY

SUSAN ALTMAN

PATRICIA NUGENT

PATTI MILLER

VICKY RIDEOUT

NADINE STROSSEN

ROBERT CORN-REVERE

DALE KUNKEL

JOANNE CANTOR

HENRY JENKINS

ROBERT PETERS

PAUL SCHROEDER

SISTER MARY PARKS

APPEARANCES (CONTINUED):

[Panelists (Continued)]{.underline}:

PAUL TAYLOR

JAMES GOODMAN

JAMIN RASKIN

PAUL LaCAMERA

HENRY GELLER

[P R O C E E D I N G S]{.underline}

(9:12 a.m.)

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Good morning and welcome to this hearing of the
Federal Communications Commission on the public interest obligations of
television broadcast licensees. Television is the most powerful,
ubiquitous medium in the history of the world. Seventy-five percent of
Americans watch local broadcast television. Children spend on average
three hours in front of the television set every single day.

Clearly, television is a medium that we all have to care about because
it is one that shapes our lives. It shapes our outlooks. It shapes what
our children learn. And we have to be concerned about the images that
are bombarding our homes and our families every single day.

Since I have been at the Commission in this particular job, I have
received lots of input from parents from all over the country. When I
travel outside of Washington, invariably people will come up to me and
ask me what are you doing about television. And frankly, in recent
years, there has been increasing concern in our country about what
parents are seeing on television. There is an increasing concern about
the coarsening of broadcast standards, more language and inappropriate
images in prime time, more violence, more sex.

And when I am in Washington, I often get lots of e-mails from parents
from around the country. And they ask me, well, what are you doing about
television? How can we protect our families from some of the images we
don\'t want our children to see?

And I have had the opportunity to bring some of these concerns to
leaders of the broadcast industry. And I relay some of these issues that
I hear. And frankly, a lot of the answers that I get are not very
satisfying. I am hearing a lot of finger-pointing. Well, it\'s not our
problem. Don\'t make us the whipping boy. It\'s not our fault. Blame the
cable television industry. Blame the gun industry. Blame the lack of
enforcement on drug control.

But frankly, those answers are not satisfying to parents and they are
certainly not satisfying to me because the fact is that television is
different today. There is a question of standards. There are fewer PSAs.
There is less involvement between broadcasters and their communities.
And part of that is a result of regulatory changes by this Agency, the
great movement of deregulation in the late \'70s and early \'80s.

But the fact remains that many, many people around the country are
concerned about television today. And the fact also remains that when
the television industry decides that they are going to make a change for
the better in our country, it can do remarkable things.

Many of you remember the tremendous PSA campaigns that this industry has
embarked on over the past couple of decades. Remember \"Buckle Up for
Safety\" and \"Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires\" and the anti-drug
abuse campaigns. These things really do change America.

And the television industry certainly has a responsibility when it comes
to making sure that all Americans feel that they have a place in this
society. I am talking about the image of minorities on television today,
an issue that I am particularly concerned about.

I remember in my own life very vividly when in the 1960s \"Eye Spy\" was
the first network television show that starred an African American in a
prime-time role. And that was a huge deal in the African American
community. And, of course, since that time, we have made a lot of
progress. There are many more starring roles of African Americans and
other minorities.

But there is still in our country a sense of unease among many minority
communities that we are not being represented on television in positive
roles and we are not seeing the kinds of positive role models that we
want our children to see. Indeed, we are having a very, very important
debate in this country between the civil rights community and the
networks to try to remedy that particular problem.

Now, the reason why we are having this hearing today is because the FCC
has a crucial role in responding to many of these concerns around the
country. Broadcasters are public trustees as many broadcasters like to
point out to me in my discussions with them. But there is a concern at
least on my part, and I know a number of people with the Commission
around the country, that nobody really knows what that means. What does
it mean to be a public trustee of the Agency, a public trustee of the
nation\'s airwaves?

Well, I believe it is important that we give some context to what that
means and define it a little better because I think, frankly, we have
lost a little focus on what it means. I talk to many broadcasters. And
many times they say, well, it means whatever we say it means. We are
serving the public interest, can\'t you see.

And I know many of them make these arguments with the best of
intentions. And they are well meaning. And they do good things in their
communities. And I commend them for it.

But frankly, being a public trustee is not just what the industry says
it should mean. It should mean something that we can collectively agree
on in constructive dialogue between industry and the public advocates
and the FCC. And that is what this hearing is all about today. I know
one thing. Being a public trustee certainly doesn\'t mean that you just
get free spectrum anymore. It must mean more than that.

Well, today I am pleased that we have a lot of very fine panelists who
are going to present on these very important issues. And we have a very
packed agenda today. We are going to hear about a lot of issues.
Hopefully at the end of the day, we will have a much better
understanding of at least what many people \-- how many people would
define what it means to be a public trustee of the airwaves.

I certainly have been fairly vocal on this issue. And I have supported a
voluntary code of conduct for broadcasters. I have urged broadcasters to
be more aggressive in supporting the V-chip so that parents can be
empowered to screen out some of the harmful images that flood into their
homes and living rooms.

And we have a number of issues that we want to cover today. And in
closing, I want to thank my colleagues because what I found in this job
is that everyone here has slightly different issues that they would like
to emphasize. And so it was a challenge to pull together a panel that
would accommodate everybody\'s concerns.

Some folks are more passionate about affirmative messages for children
on the airwaves. Others are more concerned about screening out the
harmful images of sex and violence. And I think it is fair to say that
some of my colleagues are skeptical about doing anything in this area
and are outspoken about that.

But I wanted to commend my colleagues for participating and providing
input. And I think the panelists that you will hear today reflect the
diverse viewpoints of the Agency before you.

Just a couple of housekeeping matters. We have a new technology here at
the FCC we are going to use today. We have the time clock for the first
time. And it is an effort to make sure that everybody stays within their
allotted time.

Each panelist will have five minutes to make his or her initial
presentation. The time remaining will be indicated by the lights on the
podium. The light will be green for four minutes, yellow for one minute
and then red when the speaker has exceeded five minutes. And I have been
told to enforce this aggressively.

After each panel, we will have a period for question and answer from the
bench. And time permitting, we are also going to try to allow people
from the general public to ask questions of the panelists, as well. And
we have some microphones on the aisles for that purpose.

Well, with that, I will pass the gavel to my colleague, Commissioner
Ness, and look forward to a very productive day today. Commissioner
Ness.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to
welcome all of the panelists who have come today to talk about what the
role of broadcasting society is all about. We are going to be examining
all day the public interest obligations of broadcasters, particularly as
we painstakingly enter the digital world.

Members of Congress, the public and others have increasingly decried the
rapidly declining standards of broadcast television, especially the
impact that it is having on our children. And they have focused
attention on the pledge that broadcasters have taken to serve in the
public interest. We have gotten loads of letters and e-mails on this
topic.

A couple of years ago, the Clinton-Gore administration convened a panel
to examine those responsibilities. There have been a hoard of studies
that have been done. The Kaiser Family Foundation, among others, has
contributed greatly to our understanding of what the effect of all of
these bombarding messages is on our children.

And as Congress noted, the FCC provides an invaluable forum, an
invaluable opportunity for us as a national community to examine these
issues and to try to come up with some sense of where we as a national
community are as far as the broadcast medium is concerned.

So today, we are going to be examining how broadcasters are fulfilling
their responsibilities. We are going to be reviewing how effective our
rules and guidelines are to ensure that there is, for example, ample
educational and informational children\'s programming available on
commercial television. And we are going to be assessing what steps we
can take to ensure that the public is well served.

The first panel, how do we ensure the goals of the 1990 Children\'s
Television Act are realized? There, I am going to be very interested in
seeing whether there is quality educational programming that is now
being provided on the commercial spectrum; whether our rules which we
revised in 1996 which empower parents to help sort through the offerings
on television, whether or not this is effective to allow parents to know
what programs are educational and informational so that they could
assemble their children to watch; whether \-- so these are some of the
issues that I hope that we can explore in the first panel.

For the second panel, how can we as a national community address the
tidal wave of gratuitous sex and violence on television today,
especially during the hours that children are in the audience? And
there, I hope that we will have an opportunity to see what is being done
as far as a voluntarily code of conduct for broadcasters is concerned.
It seems to me that this is a very good way for broadcasters to address
the situation themselves, we as a national community again.

The third panel looking at the special role of television in our society
as we go into a digital environment. What \-- how can this digital
medium be best used to serve in the public interest?

I would like to close my opening comments by revisiting something that I
said at the time of the Littleton massacre back in 1999. At that time, I
noted that in recent days, the images of violence have become the focus
of a nationwide attention and debate. The massacre has led many to raise
questions about the role of media, electronic games and the Internet and
portraying violence in a way that desensitizes our children and perhaps
contributes to such violence.

We see the tragedy of Columbine High and ask ourselves how can we
provide a safe and sane environment for our children. How can we deal
with the pervasive and gratuitous violence? Sacrificing our beloved
First Amendment is not the answer.

Rather, as parents, each of us must assume personal responsibility in
helping our children make choices about the programming and movies that
they watch and the games they play. And as program creators,
broadcasters, cable operators and corporate leaders must assume personal
responsibility as members of a national community and take the interests
of that community at heart.

If everyone involved in the programming food chain would ask is this a
program that I would want my children to watch, would I give it my
personal seal of approval, and then acted based upon the answers to
those questions, I would expect that we would see meaningful changes in
what is out there today.

With the right tools, information and feedback, parents and industry can
work together to make a difference. And that is, for me, what the
substance of today\'s discussion is all about. Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Commissioner Ness. Commissioner
Furchtgott-Roth.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want to
welcome the many experts we have before us today. And I want to thank my
colleagues. Mr. Chairman, I know that you and Commissioner Ness and
Commissioner Tristani feel very strongly about many of the issues before
us today and as do all of us.

Commissioner Tristani has particularly led the efforts on focus on
children. She mentions this at many different hearings. Parenting is not
easy in America. The images and messages that confront our children are
disturbing, images that make parents cringe, messages of any and all
types. And I am just talking about the checkout counter at your local
grocery store.

You see it everywhere, store windows at department stores, magazines,
news stories in newspapers. The internet is full of anything and
everything both good and shall we say not so good.

Access to these images and messages is ubiquitous in America. You will
find them at your local public library without any restrictions. You
will find them at your local school library. You will find them in your
school classrooms. You will find them at the malls. You will find them
in stores. You will find them anywhere your children are, any hour of
the day. And I have yet to even mention television.

There is a sense among many that there is something wrong in America
with our society. There is licentious behavior, permissive attitudes,
callous indifference. There are childhoods lost. There are children
growing up much too soon. Some parents wish that we could go back a
generation or more when there was less fear about what information was
available. But we cannot go back. We must deal with the problems that we
have today.

But who should decide? There are two broad choices. One is the
government can issue new regulations, can sensor a content, can use the
public bully pulpit to inhibit speech or alternatively the problems our
society faces can be solved by individuals through parenting, through
local organizations complaining about the content, by going to schools
and libraries and saying we don\'t want these magazines here, we don\'t
want this content here, this is the information we want our children to
have access to and nothing more.

There are deeds of paternalism and judgement that go on every day in
America. And these deeds are done by individuals, parents telling their
children this is right and this is wrong because it is the deed point of
the parent or the guardian in saying this is where we will go and this
is where we will not go.

Many say that the problem lies with broadcasters, that what we need is
greater public interest obligations on broadcasters. To the extent
broadcasters ever had any inescapable influence on the American public,
those days are long gone. Broadcasters account for an ever increasingly
small portion of the viewership of the American audience, of those who
even watch television. And many to date turn to the internet or to other
sources of information.

Moreover, the FCC already has standards for indecency in television. How
much further can we go? All FCC licensees are public trustees. All FCC
licensees have public interest obligations, not just in the broadcast
area. You can take a cell. phone. The company that provides the service
has hundreds, if not thousands of FCC licenses. What sort of speech goes
on on these phones? Who knows.

But we don\'t put additional public interest obligation on the carriers
who provide this service, the licenses many of which will receive for
free. Of the hundreds of thousands of FCC licenses, only a handful were
ever really paid for. And yet a lot of attention focuses narrowly on
broadcasters.

I think there has to be another answer. And I think the answer
ultimately is what makes America great, what makes America different.
And part of that goes back to the First Amendment. We in America must be
a light unto the world. We must say at all times we are individuals and
we are powerful in governments.

Our problems are ultimately solved by individuals. But the government is
here to help and we will help to the extent we can. But that help must
not involve censorship. It must not involve propaganda. It must not
involve regulation that serves no purpose.

These are the crutches of other countries around the world. They use
censorship and propaganda daily. And when their people topple those
governments as they have recently done in Serbia, the first thing they
do is they go and they take over the broadcast station and they say
never again.

We must be better in America. We must rely on the First Amendment to say
today and at all times that individuals are greater than their
government, that the government trusts the people and does not distrust
them to the extent they say we will restrict what happens, what
information you have. It is for individuals to restrict that
information. And ultimately, that is how we must go. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Powell.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here
today. I think it is useful to provide a public forum to discuss the
range of issues that are presented by television today. Certainly, in
this year, television is a much more rich and complex medium than it has
ever been. It can be found over many more mediums and distribution
vehicles than ever before.

And certainly while there has been a growth in some of the darker sides
of the images and information that we and our children see, there has
also been an extraordinary explosion of quality and entertainment and
information of value. And I think it is important to provide a public
forum to explore the benefits and blessings, as well as the dark sides
of those issues.

It is also important, however, to provide in the context of a hearing a
struggle with the historic tension between the public trustee model and
the limitations of that model as afforded by both the statute and the
First Amendment. And this has always been a complex and difficult task.
And I think we should be as committed to exploring lessons within its
boundaries, as well.

I would like to emphasize what I am willing to entertain and what I am
not. I am particularly reluctant, very reluctant to ever aim our
regulatory arrows at content itself. The statute itself says that
censorship is not permitted and it is not our charge.

In reviewing recently a discussion in the Gore Commission report about
the parameters of the Agency\'s authority, I noted a quote from the
Supreme Court case of [Columbia v. The DNC]{.underline} which reminded
us of our limits. And I just thought I would read that quote.

\"The FCC\'s oversight responsibilities do not grant it the power to
ordain any particular type of programming that must be offered by
broadcast stations. For although the Commission may inquire of licensees
what they have done to determine the needs of the community they propose
to serve, the Commission may not impose upon them its private notions of
what the public ought to hear.\"

And following this Commission principle, there is Constitutional
principle the Commission has long been careful not to interfere with the
editorial judgements of broadcasters. And I hope today doesn\'t signal a
turn in that direction, as I don\'t think that it does.

What I do believe is legitimate and I think an appropriate area of
inquiry is looking for ways to improve and enhance the power of
consumers to make the choices that they wish to make in a free society.
It is one of the reasons I think efforts like labeling, disclosure of
content, V-chip and other such measures are legitimate uses of the
government-private partnership in an attempt to empower consumers to
make those choices.

But I do need to say something further about the limits of that in the
First Amendment. In your speech this week, Mr. Chairman, you talked
about the importance of driving the DTV transition. And while I might
take issue with some specifics, I applaud you for trying to improve the
pace of that intention.

I do have concerns, however, when we suggest that television serves
principally to enhance democracy. It seems to me when the framers talked
about minting democracy, the only discussion they had about the role of
the media that existed at the time was to agree to which they were
limited to power of government\'s ability to interfere with it, not
government\'s ability to promote speech.

And I think as Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth, what is most interesting
about the Serbian collapse this week is that they tore down the
state-owned television station, the station that attempted to push onto
its citizens the message that government preferred.

This is a difficult issue because while broadcasters pursue their
financial interests, that is often synonymous with what the public wants
to see. And the challenge of the public interest standard is how much
can the government push toward showing more images that consumers might
not elect themselves to witness. And I think we have to be very careful
in that area.

While our democracy is glorious and certainly much more benevolent than
the dictatorships that we see around the world, it is no more pernicious
for the state to try to attempt to funnel or coerce free citizens to
watch and listen to the favorite broadcasters we select. In fact, in my
opinion, in a free democracy founded on individual choice, it may be
even more pernicious.

So I look forward to hearing with those parameters in place. And I
applaud the Chairman for holding the hearing. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Tristani.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have spoken before
about the pressing need to give substantive meaning to the public
interest and to ascertain whether broadcasters are fulfilling their
obligations to the American people.

I have also asked this Commission to hold a hearing devoted solely to
the effect of violent and sexual programming on our nation\'s children.
In that way, I should welcome today\'s en banc hearing. I am reluctantly
here, however, because of the following.

First, the limited time allotted to many issues that we are to cover
today does not do justice to the importance of these issues to the
American citizenry. For example, the lack of political discourse over
the people\'s airwaves merits a separate hearing of its own.

Second, and with all due respect to our esteemed panelists, I am
concerned that today\'s hearing, like too many of our public
proceedings, is a carefully scripted one and that I am here to watch a
play which I know by heart.

Third, and my principal concern, is that the issue of the effect of
violent and sexual programming on our nation\'s children is getting
short shrift. We didn\'t devote perhaps two hours, one during our
traditional lunch hour, to a subject that is increasingly preoccupying
our nation\'s leaders, our nation\'s doctors and health experts, and our
nation\'s families and parents.

Even our colleagues at the Federal Trade Commission have become engaged
in this issue, devoting more than a year and a half to a comprehensive
study with startling results. Senators McCain, Liebermann, Bade and
Brownbeck carefully outlines these concerns in their letter to this
Commission dated May 25th, 2000. In that letter, they asked, among other
things, that (1) the Commission comment on the advisability of
resurrecting an industry-adopted code of conduct and (2) that the
Commission review and re-articulate the indecency standard.

These questions would ideally be the framework of a single hearing
devoted solely to the subject. It would be ideal, as well, to have a
panel or two devoted to fact-finding on the effects of violent and
sexual programming on our children. I note in this context that the U.S.
Senate Commerce Committee recently found a directly causal connection
between violence watched and violence in real life.

That this subject is one that weighs heavily on our nation\'s parents
and families is demonstrated by the approximately 30,000 petitions that
you see on the table next to me here to my left and what I am presenting
today to the Commission. The petitions were gathered by a Puerto Rican
group called Attente. And \"attente\", by the way, means stop.

The petitioners are in Spanish and I will read the English translation.
And this is as sample petition. They are addressed to the FCC Mass Media
Bureau and also to sponsors of indecent programs. And it reads: \"Dear
Sirs, I, a Puerto Rican, believe that the following programs on
television and radio threaten our society\'s mental and emotional health
and particularly our children\'s mental and emotional health because
these programs have a high level of vulgar sexual and moral obscene and
violent content.\"

\"In addition, these programs threaten to shatter our values as Puerto
Ricans and Christians. Also, these programs are aired in open violation
of FCC statutes and rules which prohibit the airing of these types of
programs before 10:00 p.m. in the evening.\"

The petition goes on to mention three radio programs and then it
mentions specifically three television programs. The first one is
\"Notodiadimis\" which is aired on WKET Telemundo Channel 2, Mondays
8:30 to 10:00 p.m., and \"Show de Ringamund\" which is aired on WAPA
Televi Central Channel 4, Tuesdays 9:00 to 10:00 p.m., and \"Super Show
de Mecano\" on WLII Tele Unce which airs daily, 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.

The petition then goes on to state, \"I demand and expect prompt action
from you, members of the FCC. We will also be waiting for a response
from the sponsors of these programs. Cordially and in anticipation of
your response\", then there is a line for the name, the date, the
address and for the signature and for the telephone number of those who
sign.

The American citizens from Puerto Rico who signed these petitions are
crying out for action. I respectfully submit these petitions for
inclusion in the FCC record. I respectfully ask my fellow Commissioners
that they ponder what answer we can give to the grievances of these
30,000 citizens.

As to the subject of indecent broadcasting, I also ask my colleagues
whether we will consider adopting a procedure that facilitates rather
than frustrates proper review of our citizens\' complaints. Access to
the courts is a hallmark of American juris prudence. Access is ensured
by simple lotus crete.

Why should the FCC process be more difficult? It should not be more
difficult for an American to file a complaint for indecency with the FCC
than a complaint for slanting.

In sum, as I stated before, we are giving short shrift to the issue of
the effects of violent and sexual programming on our nations children.
In doing so, we fail our obligations to our fellow Americans and we fail
in our duty to protect and safeguard our children.

The noxious effects of violence and sex over the airwaves on young,
developing and impressionable minds is a health hazard that we should
face head on with determination and conviction. None of us would
hesitate to act if our children were being physically violated. But too
many of us fail to act when our children\'s minds are violated.

I am, again, reminded of the words of Albert Camut, and I paraphrase,
\"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which
children suffer. But we can reduce the number of suffering children. And
if those who have the power to make a difference don\'t help, who else
in the world can help us do this?\" Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Commissioner. I will ask now that our first
panel come forth. Now, in addition to asking that you adhere strictly to
our new little box up here, I am also going to ask that you introduce
yourself for the record and give us a brief statement of who you are and
what your affiliation is. So let\'s begin with our first panelist, Mr.
James P. Steyer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of J.P. Kids.

MR. STEYER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. I am Jim Steyer. I am
the Chairman and CEO of J.P. Kids which is a kids\' media company that
produces television and internet programming here in the U.S. I am also
founder of Children Now. My colleague, Patti Miller, will testify later.

And I have been watching the kids\' programming and broadcasting issues
really for almost a decade now. And when the FCC came forward in
adopting the regulations under the Children\'s Television Act, I think
all of us who care about high quality kids\' programming really felt
that that was a positive step forward.

Now, having run a successful kids\' television company over the past
four years, I would like to give you my impression of seeing it from the
industry side. First and foremost, I think that the use of the bully
pulpit by the FCC and by Congress has really had an effect because I
think the broadcasters of all shapes and sizes recognize the need now to
do better by kids.

Now, having said that, I think that the results overall have been mixed.
And it really depends network by network, station by station. Some
broadcasters have taken the regulations and their obligations to serve
kids quite seriously. Others have not and have basically provided a
modicum of inoffensive programming which they can slap an educational
label on.

So I would say that the bottom line in terms of the impact of the
regulations are that they have undoubtedly had an overall positive
effect by putting this issue squarely on the agenda for broadcasters,
making it an important issue for them to pay attention to. But then it
has really been up to the leadership at various stations and broadcast
networks.

For example, Ms. Sweeney who is sitting to my left oversees Disney ABC
Cable Network. She is not under Disney Channel under FCC mandate. But
they and Nickelodeon, for example, a cable channel also not under FCC
mandate, provide the best educational programming other than what is on
PBS that Pat Regent down there is responsible for.

So I would say that the regulations are important. I think that there
could be much stronger enforcement of them. I think that there are
certain networks who are not \-- who are just paying lip service to
this. And I think that they have been at least provided a positive move
in that direction, but no tremendous results yet for reasons that I
would like to speak to.

I run an independent production company here in the United States. And
we were really built in order to create high quality programming and
content for kids. That is really the mission of the company, to blend
the best in entertainment and education on behalf of kids. And the two
major factors that we have run into, we try to empower people in this
country.

We were giving consumers the choice that they want and the higher
quality programming that they want, are really market driven. And they
are in two ways. The first is because of the rapid vertical integration
of the media industry combined with the appeal of Finn Sein, it is very
difficult for independent producers to exist in this current economic
structure.

And second, because other countries such as Canada and the western
European industrial nations all support and subsidize high quality
programming for kids and the U.S. does not do that, U.S. producers are
at a disadvantage. Let me give you some examples of both of those.

In the \-- if you take a look, for example, at kids\' programming on the
broadcast networks, if you looked at NBC which has a \"teen block\",
virtually all of that programming is produced in-house by an NBC
subsidiary. I will personally tell you that most of that programming
barely passes what you meant by educational and informational
programming. But it is all produced in-house.

And even companies like the Children\'s Television Workshop, now known
as Sesame Workshop, or J.P. Kids, which we are on a mission to produce
high quality programming, run into the simple economic reality that
vertically integrated media companies in general, not without exception,
but in general would rather put on their own in-house produced programs
than those produced by outside producers. Again, there are examples like
Ms. Sweeney\'s operation which are partnered in very good ways with
independent programmers. But I think it is an area of real concern for
the Commission and one which I urge you to turn your attention to.

The second is the fact that because of subsidies, Canadian and European
broadcasters have been able to \-- producers \-- to produce the greatest
majority of kids\' programming on U.S. networks including PBS. Even PBS,
which was clearly committed to educational programming, has now given
most of the Saturday morning programming up to a Canadian company,
Novana. And it is basically because of economic reasons.

So I would urge you in this era of digital \-- this new digital era
where large sums of money could be appropriated to produce higher
quality and subsidized high quality programming and give consumers and
families a choice they want, that you look at the Canadian model, that
you look at the European models and urge that we here in the U.S. adopt
similar models to promote what we all care about which is far better
programming for kids and families here in the United States. Thank you
very much.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Jim. You have made your classmates in the
Stanford class of \'78 very proud today. Thank you. Anne Sweeney.

MS. SWEENEY: Good morning, Commissioner. Thank you for inviting me to
join you today. I am the President of the ABC Cable Networks Group and
Disney Channels worldwide. I also have creative oversight of Disney\'s
One Saturday Morning on the ABC Television Network.

We believe the best kids\' programs are those where entertainment and
education converge into a seamless experience. That is what makes
quality TV engage in programming that stimulates a kid\'s imagination
and opens his or her mind to new ideas and perspectives. To produce high
quality kids\' programming, we found that it is best to start out with a
broad consensus of viewpoints, of parents, caregivers, educational
experts and a deep understanding of and commitment to children and child
development.

The goal is to develop programming that is safe and wholesome for
children, that teaches kids how to relate to others and how to think
critically. And that helps kids formulate strategies for negotiating in
an evermore complex world.

The potential that digital television provides for service to children
and families is enormous. And we are exploring these avenues by
developing not only quality children\'s programming that has a
substantive educational base, but also web extensions for the
children\'s programming that involves parents and children in deeper
communication and learning.

This multi-media approach is part of our thinking and our planning for
the future. Clearly, there is no cookie-cutter formula for creating
quality kids programming. We do, however, always start at the same
place, with the kids, their parents and their caregivers.

Understanding children\'s developmental needs is at the core of quality
children\'s programming. And we work with a number of child development
experts to create high quality programs that are engaging and relevant
to our audience.

Let\'s use pre-school as an example. In the early pre-school years,
children are developing physical skills like walking or learning to hold
a crayon for drawing. As they move into the middle of this range, social
skills like sharing, taking turns or working in a group become
increasingly more important.

Throughout these years, language skills, thinking skills and artistic
skills are being developed. Clearly, the family environment and
pre-school play a critical role in stimulating kids\' development in
these areas. Playhouse Disney airing every day on Disney Channel reaches
over 67 million homes in the U.S. This block, dubbed Learning Powered by
Imagination, provides 49 hours of quality pre-school programs for
pre-schoolers seven days a week.

We based our programming strategy on a whole child curriculum developed
for us by educators and developmental psychologists from Harvard Project
Zero, Education for the Twenty-first Century and New York City\'s Bank
Street College of Education. Among others, this curriculum focuses on
multiple areas of child development including areas as diverse as
physical, emotional, cognitive, social and creative development.

P.B.N.J. Otter, for example, emphasizes meta-cognitive development or
thinking about thinking with young characters who introduce language for
talking about thinking and who model problem-solving behaviors. Every
episode emphasizes how exciting it is to have brainstorms and how
playing make believe are all part of using your noodle. And if we had
the room, I would happily demonstrate the noodle dance. But I am afraid
we don\'t have the time or the space today.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: We will make time for that.

(Laughter.)

MS. SWEENEY: Would you? Only if you join me.

(Laughter.)

MS. SWEENEY: The learning value of television is not restricted though
to pre-school, but extends to school-age children and young teens.
Taking a look at these kids, these years are characterized by a
broadening of kids\' worlds to include not only their families, but
peers, their schools, their communities and the world at large.

At about seven or eight years old, kids transition from a world of
fantasy to one in which the real world plays an increasingly larger
role. The focus for school-age kids is on making friends, doing well at
school, mastering hobbies, skills and sports. It is a time of excitement
and uncertainty as kids undergo a range of new experiences and emotions
and take on more responsibility for themselves and within their
families.

For this age group, we have created Disney\'s One Saturday Morning which
airs weekly on ABC. Working with educational consultants, programs in
the blocks are designed to empower kids, foster self-expression and to
sensitize them to the world around them.

For example, Disney\'s \"Recess\" is a collection of animated stories
about a group of fourth graders who attend a suburban public school.
While friends for years, they are all ethnically and gender diverse.
They provide role models for viewers who may be struggling with problems
common to this age group.

Zoog Disney on Disney Channel is also created specifically for
middle-age kids and young teens. At Zoog Disney, we found reality
programming to be an effective tool. \"Bug Juice\", a reality series,
follows the adventures of kids at summer camp and deals with becoming
increasingly independent, setting personal goals and developing
competence and skills.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Ms. Sweeney, if you would just wrap up, please.

MS. SWEENEY: Okay. Thank you. I wanted to say something wonderful about
\"The Famous Jett Jackson\" that was produced by J.P. Kids for us. But
that is included in my written remarks.

Well, I just wanted to wrap up by saying that parents today were raised
with educational television. And they readily acknowledge the role that
we play in stimulating their kids\' imaginations and curiosity. And they
expect TV to help promote their children\'s learning and growth.

We believe that television can play a critical role in opening up the
minds of their children and adolescents. TV serves, as we know, both as
a mirror and a window, reflecting kids\' lives and experiences and
opening their view to wider perspectives and broader horizons. Thank
you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much. Ms. Montgomery.

DR. MONTGOMERY: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Dr. Montgomery, excuse me.

DR. MONTGOMERY: Thank you. Good morning. My name is Kathryn Montgomery.
And I am President of the Center for Media Education. Since I co-founded
CME almost ten years ago, we have worked with a broad coalition of child
advocacy, health, consumer and other groups to promote a wide range of
policies. And our goal has always been to promote a more democratic
media system that will serve the needs of all Americans, particularly
children and youth.

CME was joined by a number of groups including the National PTO, the
National Education Association and the American Psychological
Association in filing our comments in the FCC\'s notice of inquiry on
digital television earlier this year. And I want to thank the Commission
for taking our recommendations seriously and formalizing many of them
into this notice of proposed rule-making.

But I speak today not only as an advocate, but also as an educator and a
scholar of media history, a history that I think is worth revisiting as
we consider issues facing us today. The allocation of valuable spectrums
to these broadcasters has parallels in the late \'40s and early \'50s
when there was intense competition for potentially lucrative television
licenses in communities across the country.

And as Professors Barry Cole and Mile Edinger wrote in their 1978
[History of the FCC: Reluctant Regulators]{.underline}, \"Many
broadcasters and most television stations got their stations\" \-- \"and
most television licensees got their stations in the first place by
following the old R. Pej slogan, \'Promise her anything.\' Applicants
vied to see who could promise the most uplifting and enlightening
programs. Each vowed to educate the community\'s children, provide
local, live church service for shut-ins and offer hours to develop the
talents of local artists and actors. Drama, sure. Shakespeare and
O\'Neil. Comedy, Aristophanes. Commercials, only if we can squeeze them
in between the city council meetings and the help for handicapped
veterans show.\"

As the authors note, however, as soon as the regulatory spotlight faded
and broadcasters had secured their piece of the spectrum, most of these
same stations simply reneged on their promises. By the end of the TV\'s
first decade, many of the promised public interest programming had
either never materialized or had vanished from the schedule. This
failure of broadcasters to live up to their promises prompted one of
your predecessors, Mr. Chairman, to pin that infamous and sticky label,
\"Vast wasteland\", on the new medium.

Now that we are entering the digital age, broadcasters have again traded
on their public trustee status to demand and receive from the government
extremely valuable spectrum, promising to deliver quality, high
definition television programming and digital services to benefit the
public.

To date, many broadcasters have not yet delivered on that promise. Yet
they know they are sitting on valuable digital property. As the
Commission is well aware, digital television is a rapidly developing
medium which will eventually become the standard way U.S. citizens
receive their television and very likely internet service, as well.

As today\'s issue of the industry standard predicts, by 2004, 30 million
U.S. households will use interactive TV services. In 2005, interactive
TV should generate 25 billion dollars in revenue from advertising,
commerce and subscription fees.

With its engaging and interactive properties, digital television is
likely to have a more profound impact on how children grow and learn
what they value and ultimately who they become than any medium that has
come before. And children are embracing digital medium with great
enthusiasm. As skilled multi-taskers, children are already using
television and the internet simultaneously.

As one market researcher recently said, and I am paraphrasing,
\"Children are not just adopting digital media, they are internalizing
it.\" Therefore, it is critically important that we build into the
foundations of the new media system a policy framework for serving
children that can help guide the development of the new digital media
culture.

Let me quickly underscore, I believe digital television has enormous
positive potential. And our policy agenda must do more than just protect
them from harmful content. I have been actively involved in the V-chip.
I support it. I share everyone\'s concerns. But it would be unfortunate
if the debate over the next generation of television focused solely on
how we as parents can block out what is offensive or violent to our
children.

So we have three policy bills. I will be very brief. They are detailed
in our earlier comments and will be developed in more detail in our
formal comments for the NPRM.

First, the additional spectrum awarded to broadcasters for DTV
dramatically expands their options for delivery programs and services
and for generating profits. It is essentially that we set forth clear,
quantifiable processing guidelines for how DTV broadcasters use these
enhanced capabilities to serve children\'s educational and informational
needs.

Secondly, digital technology is ushering in an entirely new set of
interactive advertising, marketing and data collection practices. They
are dramatically different and more disturbing from those in our
conventional television. We need effective protections for children
against abuses by marketers.

And, finally, digital broadcasters must do more to support a quality,
civic media culture, one that will serve children not just as consumers,
but also as citizens. With voter participation among young people at a
record low, the public should be demanding that broadcasters contribute
to a healthier democratic process.

I support my colleague, Paul Tailor, and the Alliance for Better
Campaigns in urging the FCC to develop new rules that require TV
stations to provide free time to political candidates. I believe there
is a lot at stake at this particular historical moment. The choices you
make now can help create a more democratic media system for the
twenty-first century and enable us to harness the power of the new
digital media as a positive force in the lives of children and families.

But if the Commission fails to establish an effective policy framework
for digital television, then the woman who sits in your seat as Chair of
the FCC in 2010 may be forced to declare the digital media landscape a
vast wasteland. I urge you not to let that happen.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Doctor. Maybe sooner than 2010. Ms. Altman.
Let\'s hope.

MS. ALTMAN: Hello. I am Susan Altman, the Producer of \"It\'s
Academic.\" Despite the number of new entertainment options available to
children today, broadcast television still plays a primary role. And the
FCC regulations requiring substantive programming for children has been
of critical importance in seeing that there is quality television
available for this age group.

Some broadcasters have decried these regulations saying that such
programs get low ratings and the children aren\'t watching them. Well, I
can only say that perhaps their programs just aren\'t good enough and
perhaps they are not using the medium to the full extent of its
capabilities.

The program we produce, \"It\'s Academic\", is now in its fortieth
season on NBC-4 in Washington, D.C. And it is usually first in its time
slot both in the regular season and during reruns. And the program is
also produced with local schools in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, Raleigh,
Charlottesville.

Part of its success is due to the unique relationship that we have
forged with the educational community. Each year, hundreds of students
from public, parochial, private, suburban and inner-city schools
participate in the program. The competition is intense and students come
out in force to root for their teams with bands and cheerleaders and
fans, many with their faces painted in school colors.

The agilation normally reserved for athletic heros is extended to
students who represent their schools on the program. And elementary and
middle school students watch the program and look forward to the day
when they can appear on the show.

The chance to appear on television is still exciting for thousands of
youngsters and older people, too, judging by the folks who wave at the
camera at various events. And competition is one of the great
motivators. By combining the two, television and competition, we are
able to support the efforts of the schools to inspire children
academically. In fact, school systems in Washington and Baltimore
metropolitan areas have made \"It\'s Academic\" clubs official
extra-curricular activities.

Many of the \-- almost every weekend, one of the clubs will hold an
academic tournament to which they invite other schools in the area and
thus extending the benefits of academic competition to far more students
than can appear on our show. And many of these tournaments directly
reflect the \"It\'s Academic\" program.

If the show were not on the air, such activities would lose much of
their status and probably wither away. In Washington and Baltimore, we
have a community-minded sponsor, Giant Food, that keeps the show on the
air. And elsewhere, you find broadcasters who take their
responsibilities to the community seriously.

But more and more, we are seeing broadcasters for whom the bottom line
is everything. And that is not good. Television is too powerful a medium
and has too strong an impact, especially on our young people, to exist
in a laissez faire atmosphere.

It is precisely because youngsters today are bombarded by all kinds of
material from movies, TV, cable, radio, the internet, material that many
parents feel helpless to intercept, that the FCC should take a strong
stand in those areas where it has authority. That stand must emphasize
the responsibility of broadcasters to act in \"the best interest of the
community.\" And surely that responsibility includes a demand for
quality children\'s programming on all levels.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much, Ms. Altman. My wife and I had a
debate a few months ago about whether or not the questions on \"It\'s
Academic\" are really getting harder or whether we are just losing brain
cells. So I would love to talk to you about that maybe after the final
\-- Ms. Miller.

MS. MILLER: Good morning. My name is Patty Miller. I am the Director of
the Children in the Media Program at Children Now, a national,
nonpartisan children\'s advocacy organization headquartered in
California. Our President, Lois Salsbury, was supposed to testify this
morning but due to illness is unable to be here. So I am stepping in on
her behalf.

The challenge before the Commission, the broadcast industry and
advocates alike is to create a media environment for children in the
digital age that is worthy of our society. An immediate environment
worthy of our society primarily must include all children.

We need to ensure that children see programming in a digital era that is
inclusive and reflects the increasingly diverse world in which they
live. Today\'s children will be the first generation to come of an age
when racial minorities will be the numeric majority. Healthy growth and
development requires that all of our nation\'s children have the
opportunity to see themselves positively portrayed without being
subjected to racial and gender stereotypes.

In 1998, Children Now conducted the first national poll of American
youth which explored the perceptions of race and class in the media. Our
study, A Different World, found that children of all races recognized
the power of the medium to limit aspirations and to reinforce
stereotypes. As one African American boy told us, \"People are inspired
by what they see on television. If they don\'t see themselves on TV,
they want to be someone else.\"

According to our research, across all races, children agree it is
important to see people of their own race on television because 1) it
tells children that people of their race are important, 2) it makes
children of that race feel included, and 3) it provides role models.

Three-quarters of kids that we polled said categorically that there are
not enough Latino and Asian characters on television. And they are
right. In 1999, Children Now conducted a contents study called Fall
Colors which examined diversity in all prime time shows across the six
networks. We found that Latinos and Asians were virtually invisible,
comprising three percent and two percent, respectively, of the total
prime time population. Native Americans fared worse, barely reaching a
percentage point.

And while African Americans were more visible, too often that meant they
were compartmentalized into sit-coms. Our children deserve programming
across digital television from EI programming to prime time which
satisfies their desire for inclusivity and accurately reflects the
diversity of their lives. And for more information about the range of
the work we have done on racial and gender stereotypes, I invite you to
take a look at our full testimony that we filed.

In a new digital era, we have the opportunity consider rules,
innovations and partnerships to create a media environment worthy of our
society. This summer, Children Now held a convening at Stanford
University for top TV in the media industry leaders called \"Supporting
Children in the Digital Village.\" The discussion focused on how to
provide content for kids, content that is education, diverse, fun,
interactive and age appropriate.

Interestingly, much of the discussion from the industry focused on the
fact that the marketplace alone may not be enough to ensure good content
for children. Industry leaders were receptive to the notion that content
that is good for children and content that parents want may require
government and industry to work together to develop potential
public-private partnerships.

And in addition to exploring potential partnerships to maximize
opportunities for children, we also need to ensure that current rules
are applied in the best possible way to ensure there is a floor for good
children\'s programming.

Last March, Children Now, along with People for Better TV, submitted
comments to the FCC outlining our recommendations for how to apply the
Children\'s Television Act to digital TV. We are very pleased that the
Commission has announced it will proceed to a rule-making to best serve
the needs of America\'s children.

As part of Children Now\'s comments to the FCC, we suggested the idea of
a proportional rule which came about from discussions of several leading
academics and children in the media. In a digital era with the ability
to multicast, Children Now proposes that EI programming \-- the hours of
EI programming be proportional to the number of hours broadcasters are
broadcasting overall.

In the next several weeks, we will be talking to academics to further
refine our proposal based upon the questions that the Commission raised
in the NPRM. And we hope that the Commission will seriously consider
this recommendation.

Finally, to be sure that digital television creates a media environment
worthy of our society, we must take advantage of the new technology. The
technology of digital television provides great opportunity to enhance
diversity. With digital broadcasters\' ability to multicast, local
stations have the opportunity to provide more locally produced content.
With the ability to air several channels at once, broadcasters no longer
have to worry that their programs be all things to all people. They can
target the various channels to specific audiences.

Local broadcasters could produce their own EI programs and focus on the
demographics of children in a particular community. So there could be
different children\'s programs that speak to specific racial and ethnic
groups in our local community.

Finally, I just want to say again that our children deserve programming
across digital TV from EI programming to prime time which satisfies
their desire for inclusivity and accurately reflects the diversity of
their lives. Our future will depend on children\'s ability to develop
positive racial identities and an appreciation of diversity. And the
media can play a strong role in achieving those goals.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Well said. Thank you very much. Ms. Nugent.

MS. NUGENT: My name is Patricia Nugent. I am the Senior Director of
Children\'s Programming at PBS. And I want to begin by thanking you, Mr.
Chairman, and the entire Commission for your strong record of support
for public television. I was eager to appear before you today because
providing nonviolent and educational programming for children is a core
element of our mission.

As the Commission considers how the public interest may best be served
by broadcasters in the digital age, I would respectfully suggest that
public television would be at the center of your thinking.

After all, in an increasingly competitive media marketplace dominated by
a handful of global corporations, only public television can and will
devote its creativity and resources to providing noncommercial
educational children\'s content free of charge to a universal American
audience.

PBS stations currently aired a six-children series that are watched by
more two to five-year-olds than any other programs on television. We
have focused on pre-schoolers because we believe that success in school
begins early. As Fred, Mr. Rogers, says, \"No one can learn until they
are ready to learn.\" Yet one in three five-year-olds arrives in school
unprepared for kindergarten.

Each PBS kid series is developed to achieve specific curriculum goals
and is accompanied by on-line educational resources, workshops that
teach parents how to connect television to reading, free books for
children who otherwise wouldn\'t own them, and a magazine in English and
Spanish.

Each major series is accompanied by entertaining and wholesome websites
that enables kids to dig deeper into their favorite programs, learning
and having fun at the same time. In addition, PBS is a number one
television resource for schools with 12 of the top 15 shows cited by
teachers as best for classroom use.

The federally-funded, ready-to-learn program also provides major support
for a ground-breaking new series that premiered on PBS in April called
\"Between the Lions.\" One of the most important television programs for
young children since \"Sesame Street\", \"Between the Lions\" presents
an early reading \-- excuse me, presents an early reading curriculum
created by the nation\'s top literacy experts. And the results are
astounding.

An independent study by the University of Kansas found that watching
just four weeks of the series helped kindergartners significantly raise
their reading skills and scores. \"Between the Lions\" has taken
television to a completely new level and reveals a promise of
children\'s programming that is truly committed to raising educational
achievement.

Anticipating the digital future, PBS in 1999 launched a 24-hour,
noncommercial digital channel called PBS Kids comprised entirely of
nonviolent and educational programs for children. The channel is
currently available through 32 local PBS stations in 24 states which is
more than six million households nationwide.

PBS is also the first to test interactive digital programming for
children with an enhanced version of its unique wildlife series
Zoboomafoo in 1999. When outside authorities look at children\'s
programming, they invariably like what they see on PBS stations.

And as influential, a 1999 survey of television \-- children\'s
television, the Annenburg Public Policy Center of the University of
Pennsylvania found that PBS presented the highest quality and most
educational programs on television. The survey reported that PBS
children\'s programs had no violence, no problematic language and the
most ethnic and gender diversity of its characters.

While we are proud of our record, we know there is still much more to be
done. We have in our pipeline several new series designed with
educational interactivity that capitalizes upon the convergence of
television and the internet. We would also like to bring enhanced
educational television to our entire PBS kids\' schedule as well as the
PBS kids\' channel.

This fall, we have trials underway with a number of leading cable
operators in selective markets to explore enhanced TV programming
concepts. We deliver all these unique and important services for
children with a small fraction of the resources available to other
television enterprises.

Our current funding sources will never enable us to seize our digital
opportunities and achieve the valuable public service goals I have
described. For the American people to receive the full promise of
digital technology, the Federal Government should expand its historic
partnership with public television.

I would like to share one more idea for your consideration. We recommend
the development of a new fund of public television to stimulate the
creation of digital content for children\'s programs and related on-line
and broad band services. PBS would employ these funds to give our
children\'s programs a full complement of interactive learning
experiences on television, the internet and new distribution platforms
such as broad band and wireless devices.

Consistent with our fundamental commitment to universal access, we would
ensure that these features were available to people from low income
households, those whose primary language is not English and persons with
disabilities. We can provide the content to bridge the digital divide.

In closing, I applaud the Commission\'s commitment to ensuring that
public airwaves serve the public interest and look forward to working
closely with you to implement this vital national priority in the
future. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much, Ms. Nugent. Now we will have a
few minutes for questioning from the Commissioners. And then if time
permitting, we will also invite some questions from the floor. Thank you
all for those presentations. They were all very concise and very, very
useful to us.

And one theme that seemed to sort of run through all of your testimonies
is that there is a need for some government involvement in this area.
Jim, you talked about the Canadian model and the need for a Federal
Government subsidy. And Ms. Nugent and Ms. Miller talked about
private-public partnerships.

Ms. Altman, of course, you have one of the most successful local
children\'s shows. But you have a long time sponsor in Giant Foods that
has been with you consistently. And Ms. Sweeney, you have \-- coming
from the cable industry, you have somewhat of a different economic model
than the broadcasters.

I believe that one reason why Congress passed the Children\'s Television
Act of 1990 is because they recognized that there is a market failure
when it comes to providing affirmative educational programming for our
kids. I think that is pretty clear from the legislation and certainly
from our implementing rules.

I guess my question for this panel of experts is are there shows out
there that are both serving the educational and informational needs of
kids, but also successful in the marketplace? Is there a business model
for this type of programming? Jim?

MR. STEYER: I do think there is, Mr. Chairman. But it is very, very
tough. And I think that what you are hearing from industry, as well as
from the public sector, is that there isn\'t \-- that a blend of
traditional business models \-- I mean, I run a for-profit media
company. It is a very difficult business in a vertically integrated
world where the competition from Canada, Europe and elsewhere have up to
50 percent of the budgets of their high quality programs subsidized by
the Canadian government or the French government or other governments.

So I think there very definitely is a solution out there which is a
blend of traditional private marketplace solutions that emphasize
commercially successful programming with curriculum and educational
elements built in, but which receives support from \-- in the same way
that basically every other western industrialized nation does it.

And I think that it would be great for this Commission to follow \-- to
expand even upon what PBS is asking for and look at this in a more broad
way. That is \-- that doesn\'t run into issues of censorship that you
raised, Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth, or issue of restricting content.
This is enhancing choice and giving opportunities to American families,
to parents and kids for quality programming.

And I think that a pure marketplace solution alone will not suffice.
There aren\'t that many Anne Sweeneys out there. And I think that a
blend of this is really what can happen and that this should be the next
major leadership role I think for the Commission in this regard.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Anyone else?

DR. MONTGOMERY: Well, I would just like to say that I believe that the
Children\'s Television Act and particularly the processing guideline,
the three-hour processing guideline has had an overall impact on the
marketplace that may even reach beyond broadcasting in that it has
raised the level of debate about the need for quality educational
programming.

And there are programs on broadcast television \-- and I think Ms.
Sweeney has provided examples \-- that are doing well in the
marketplace. And as you indicated earlier, your so-called FCC-friendly
shows \-- which is a term I don\'t like to use, but I find myself using
\-- I do better with terms like being carried by television stations,
television affiliates than some of your other programming.

You know, my hope is that the standards that we create for serving
educational and informational needs of children will actually have an
impact that goes far beyond broadcast television. However, I would like
to add that for digital television which has, I repeat, gotten
additional spectrum driven on its public trustee status, we should be
asking for more.

And we should be asking for digital broadcasters to use that special
capability that broadcast television has to enhance children\'s
educational and informational needs. And that may go beyond programming.
It should include serving schools perhaps, providing program into
schools and connecting others. There are many things that digital
broadcasters could do if they want to continue to be public trustees to
really enhance and support children\'s educational needs in this digital
era.

MS. SWEENEY: Just to clarify something that Dr. Montgomery mentioned and
Jim, as well, referencing the FCC-friendly programming, that ABC One
Saturday Morning is running a two-hour block that is supplied by the ABC
television network. It clears an average of 93 percent of the country
unlike the programming that is produced without \-- that is not
FCC-friendly, although it is very friendly, which clears somewhere in
the neighborhood of 79 to 82 percent.

I think there is another component that we haven\'t spoken to. We have
talked about business models. What we haven\'t spoken about is
creativity. And, you know, moving forward, we have to realize that kids
are already embracing an interactive future. They are there. There
isn\'t a space between the television set and computer for them.

So as we work with producers going forward and recognize the educational
needs of kids, I believe we need to be aware of the many creative
avenues that we have to pursue as broadcasters and as cable-casters.

The Walt Disney Company provides opportunities to 30 individual creative
companies in the course of a given week to provide programming to the
ABC television network, to Disney Channel and to Toon Disney. I think
going forward, that needs to be both a focus and a component in looking
at all the structures.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you. Just to get a little bit more specific on
my question, what I am really looking for, are there examples of
children\'s educational and informational programming on the air today
that is profitable? And you may have suggested that with the clearances
of your Saturday morning block.

But when you look across sort of the spectrum of children\'s television
programming today and you go to these meetings \-- and I am not asking
you to be revealing any proprietary information here, but is there a
sense among the executives that are producing this programming that it
is going to make money?

MS. ALTMAN: Well, sure. I mean, \"It\'s Academic\" makes money. We are a
profit-making company. The problem isn\'t that broadcasters don\'t think
these programs can earn money. It is that they think that other
programming can earn more. And that is where we really run into a
problem.

Yes, there are plenty of community-minded broadcasters out there who
feel that in addition to making money, they also have other
responsibilities. And they act on it. But there is tremendous \-- as the
competition with cable increases and with the internet increases, there
is tremendous pressure on these people to produce economically. And
usually, that means going to the highest kind of program manager.

It could be an infomercial. It doesn\'t matter as long as it pays. So it
is not that we can\'t produce economically. We can. But there is a
perception out there that other things can earn a lot more at a lower
cost. And sometimes that is right and there is nothing much we can do
about that.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you.

MS. SWEENEY: So there is \-- if you don\'t make a value judgement saying
that we want certain kinds of programming on there, whether or not they
are \-- you know, the fact that \-- I don\'t want to say we are a zircon
around a bunch of diamonds economically. But basically, other things \--
we can do it. We can do it. But we do need an incentive. Look, people
are charitable, too. But it doesn\'t hurt that the tax code gives them a
deduction when they contribute to various charities. And that is what we
are talking about.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you. I should give my colleagues an opportunity
to get in here.

COMMISSIONER NESS: When we drafted the guidelines and rules for the
Children\'s Television Act in 1996, we emphasized empowering parents to
work together with broadcasters to ensure that there is quality
educational programming that is available, that they know when that
programming is aired so they will have an opportunity to get their
children perhaps sitting together to watch.

And we have seen that roll-out with varying degrees of success. One of
the issues that I have been concerned about is ensuring that parents
know when there is educational and informational programming available
because it seems to me that if there are more eyeballs watching, little
ones and big ones alike, society is going to get more Giant folks and
others to sponsor these programs and, therefore, create a better
financial model for flourishing such \-- for the fluorishment of such
programs.

One of the questions I would like to have answered is to what extent
have you been working with parents, teacher groups and the like to get
the word out about the existence of educational and informational
programming? Anyone can pick up on this.

MS. NUGENT: At PBS, we are, indeed, very much aware that parents and
children need to watch television together. And that enhances the
educational experience for kids. And also, we want people to know that
it is fun. Kids enjoy watching and parents enjoy watching the
programming.

But specifically, we have our website speaking to parents and offering
them information on our curriculum and educational goals and with our
ready-to \-- free ready-to-learn service creating a site specific to
parents to help them know more about the programming and what is being
done in terms of PBS and working with parents.

In addition to that, at the local level into community outreach, we have
PBS stations that work at the community level to help parents, educators
and people in schools know what information is available in terms of our
programming and how the educational experience of the programming can be
enhanced through print materials and through the grant.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Anyone else want to respond on that?

MS. SWEENEY: Yes. We have two interesting examples in our company. One
is Playhouse Disney which is targeted to pre-schoolers where we
absolutely target mothers, fathers and caregivers and alert them to the
educational value of the programming and how to find the programming.

It is a little bit different for us with middle-age kids, the kids that
we are reaching with Zoog Disney and One Saturday Morning. In that case,
we have to go to where the kids are. And if our intent is to build
eyeballs and to bring them to the television set, it is incumbent upon
us to use every single avenue afforded to us by the Walt Disney Company,
as well as outside media.

So when it comes to the middle-age kids, we are utilizing everything
from our own airwaves to paid media across a number of websites and
other television networks.

DR. MONTGOMERY: And I would like to say that public broadcasting I think
does a very good job of reaching out to audiences and the communities.
And unfortunately, not enough commercial broadcasters do that. I think
that they could take the initiative. We have done so on the part of the
nonprofit community to create room for broadcasters, some community
viewings and some of our work we have done in Maryland and out in
California. But that is very \-- a great responsibility for a nonprofit
to do.

And I think broadcasters should take more initiative to reach out to the
community, to bring parents in, to bring educators in, to talk about
quality programming for children. There is much more they could do in
that area.

COMMISSIONER NESS: It seems to me that there ought to be a way to get
broadcasters in a community to work with parents or teacher groups or
with some food chain such as the Giant Food to publish inexpensively a
list of all of the educational programming available for children in the
course of a week and have it distributed at the checkout counters as a
freebie flier for parents so they will know when the programming takes
place. Is there any reason why something like that could not occur
inexpensively?

MS. ALTMAN: Well, we do pretty good because we work with the schools,
for example. All the schools get a schedule, a poster that is made up by
Giant Food so that they know the listing of all the games. And, of
course, we provide photographs of the team to yearbooks and so forth.
And we also will provide material. There will be PTA \"It\'s Academic\"
Nights will students will compete against teachers and so forth.

COMMISSIONER NESS: That\'s terrific. But that is just one program.

MS. ALTMAN: I understand. And that is my point. It is just one program.
And we really can only do it on that basis. It becomes \-- I think \--
you have a listing. I mean, you can always have a listing and you can
providing. But you\'ve got to listen to what \--

COMMISSIONER NESS: But for the most part, newspapers don\'t really make
it very clear what is educational and informational programming. The TV
Guides don\'t really make it abundantly clear.

I have been trying for the last couple of years, for example, to get the
weekly listings to have a separate box that we have separate advertising
where all of the educational and informational programming for that week
can be listed so a parent can look down real quick, figure out what the
age group that is targeted is and ensure that they have an opportunity
to watch with their children.

MR. STEYER: Commissioner Ness?

COMMISSIONER NESS: Yes?

MR. STEYER: I am a parent of three kids and I am in the industry. And I
would say you are exactly right. It doesn\'t happen except for PBS. And
it is \-- again, it is all about economics. It really is. There are two
ways to do it. The Commission could require that local broadcast
stations do that and that they could air on some basis the announcements
about what are the educational and informational programming that they
are offering.

You could either require that or you could provide some sort of
incentive to do that like some form of tax credit or otherwise. It is
really \-- it really comes down to that simple a choice because most
stations don\'t have the full-time community service representatives out
there doing those things.

It really comes down \-- almost everything that relates to kids\'
programming, it ends up being a question of economics and whether or not
the resources are \-- you either require it from every station or you
need to provide some sort of \-- and that is why I keep coming up with
the Canadian model, because it is a proven successful model of tax
credits where people will then put the resources that are necessary to
inform parents to create programming, et cetera.

DR. MONTGOMERY: That the television industry of reaching out to schools
to promote prime time docu-dramas and TV movies or so forth that are of
historical interest or for any other reason they want to promote, they
put money into that. And they do it all the time.

I would argue, and I may seem like a cynic here, but I would argue that
for some of the broadcasters, they have because of the quality of the
educational programs they have produced, they have created a decent
center for making that information known to parents because often when I
am talking about these programs to parent groups, they say that\'s
educational? And I almost feel apologetic because I say, you know, we
tried.

You know, we have been trying to make it better and the law permits a
wide range of content. And we can\'t intrude any further and we don\'t
think it is appropriate for us to. But parents do have a role to play
there.

Broadcasters have over \-- even though they have point people, contact
people who are supposed to deal with children\'s shows, they are not
being very proactive in this area. And I agree with Jim. I think there
is more the Commission could do to prod them a little bit.

COMMISSIONER NESS: I would love to hear from the networks if they could
respond back as to why they couldn\'t get together and have a list
published and perhaps distributed in each community so that parents do
know what the educational \--

MR. STEYER: They could, Commissioner Ness. They could. And Dr.
Montgomery is right. And Anne would be proud to list what is on ABC One
Saturday Morning. And she could give you the curriculum on every program
as well as probably most of the programs on the Disney Channel.

But I can assure you that there are other networks who we all know who
would never want to do that for the exact reasons that Kathy just said
which is they are putting up programs that if you told me as a parent
that these are educational, I would be hard pressed to believe that. And
I think that either the Commission has to act or then the other
alternative which I think makes sense in the big picture is \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Can I follow up on that? Can anyone here do an
estimate on the proportion of educational programming that is really
educational? What are we talking about here?

DR. MONTGOMERY: I don\'t know if I can give figures. But I would refer
you to the Annenburg report, the most recent Annenburg report which I
don\'t have with me for figures. But they created categories \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: What were they just for \--

DR. MONTGOMERY: Minimally educational is a range, you know. And I would
say it is a pretty large proportion, probably at least half, that are
questionably educational. And, in fact, part of the problem is that the
statute says it can serve emotional and \-- I know this by heart and I
have forgotten it \-- emotional and, you know, either intellectual or
cognitive or emotional-social. That\'s right.

And it is easier to create the programming that serves the emotional and
social needs. And that is how we got into the problem with \"The
Jetsons\", which I wasn\'t going to bring up here. But that is how they
got by or thought they were going to get by with putting \"The Jetsons\"
on and saying it was teaching children what life would be like in the
year 2000 which we are now in. But, you know, unfortunately, far too
many of the programs are in that kind of very \"iffy\" category.

MS. SWEENEY: Yes, I \-- \"Jetsons\" aside, I don\'t agree that it is
easier to produce shows that respond more to the social and emotional
growth of children.

DR. MONTGOMERY: I don\'t think it should be. I am saying that is the
argument that is often made.

MS. SWEENEY: No, it isn\'t easier.

DR. MONTGOMERY: No, I think it is important to understand that when you
are targeting kids as ABC is who are between the ages of six and 11,
these are very relevant and contemporary issues to this age group. And
the fact that ABC has taken the step and the Walt Disney Company has
made the investment in producing shows and new shows that address the
issues that kids are facing I think is very significant.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Let me follow up. And I have got to go to my
subject. And first of all, I want to thank all of you for your good
testimony and for your good efforts in producing, those of you that do
produce programming, and the care and you are able to get it to the
American people and the advocates that have their good things to say.

By the way, Children Now, I have looked at your studies with too much
pain about the negative stereotyping or lack of images. Particularly, I
am Latino, so a lack of images for Latino children. And unfortunately,
since you produced those studies, things haven\'t changed at all in any
real meaningful way.

But I have to tell you that I get a lot of e-mail. I get a lot of
letters. And as you see, I got 30,000 petitions last week. And I can
count maybe on one or two hands e-mails from parents saying give us more
educational programming, not that that isn\'t important. But what I hear
from parents is empower us in some way to stop this barrage of
inappropriate programming for our kids.

So I want to ask each and every one of you do you think resurrecting a
broadcasters code of conduct would be helpful? And you can start, Mr.
Steyer.

MR. STEYER: I actually \-- I saw the Chairman\'s remarks earlier this
week, too, about a voluntary code of conduct. And I am all for that. I
think that, for example, we used to devote a law about the family hour.
And one thing I have learned, by the way, as a creator of kids\'
programming and having left my advocacy spurs in the closet, is that in
fact many of the programs you are most concerned about or people are
most concerned about are not kids\' programs.

They are actually adult programs that are airing at inappropriate times.
That is really a problem. You know, I\'ve got kids who are \-- my oldest
is seven years old. Well, if she is watching television after 8:00 p.m.
in the evening or even just about any time, there is stuff that is on.

It is rarely kids\' programming. It is usually adult programming which
has no sorts of guidelines. And I do think that\'s where voluntary codes
of conduct come into play. So, yes, I would urge you to do that. And I
would also say to you, Commissioner Tristani, that your concerns in this
regard \-- and I know the next panel will also address issues of
violence and sexuality, et cetera \-- are really important.

But the Commission should view them at some point distinct from the
issues we are talking about here which is promoting better quality and
more high quality kids\' programming. But, yes, I would certainly
support voluntary codes of conduct all the way.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Ms. Sweeney?

MS. SWEENEY: It has been my experience that any time rules are written
or codes of conduct have been drawn up that people find ways around
them. And I believe it is incumbent upon each of us as producers of
children\'s programming, producers of programming overall to act
responsibly.

DR. MONTGOMERY: I recently met with some network servers and practices
executives who went through a great deal of detail to tell me about
their policies for ensuring quality in children\'s programming and in
other programming and adhering to the television ratings because I serve
on the monitoring board for the TV ratings system.

And I asked them, gee, those are very interesting. Why don\'t you
publish those? And they said, oh, well, we don\'t want to do that
because then somebody might hold us to them and, you know, we put
ourselves into a very vulnerable position. And I think, again, that is
part of the problem.

I do think it is a good idea to have broadcasters come up with a code of
conduct. They had one before. You know, the problem with it was that
people didn\'t adhere to it. I used to hold it up to my classes and then
read from a TV Guide. And it got a lot of laughs. You know, we will not
do this, we won\'t do this, and we will always do. And then I would read
descriptions of programs.

So I am a little bit skeptical that it would work. But I do think that
there needs to be a continuing debate about the quality of our media
culture. And certainly, much more needs to be done by all members of the
media industry to raise that level of quality and this issue will not go
away.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Ms. Altman.

MS. ALTMAN: Well, I agree. I do think there needs to be a code of
conduct. A parent should not have to stand guard constantly over a TV
set to make sure that nothing objectionable is on it for a child. There
his no reason why the programming that pushes the limits can\'t be on
later in the evening. Eight o\'clock is too early.

And the fact is you are not getting complaints about just one or two
programs where maybe somebody\'s judgement went off a little bit. You
are getting complaints \-- or at least I know we get complaints \-- that
program after program after program is inappropriate for younger
children. And not only for younger children, for 12 and 13-year-olds.

As the medium changes \-- well, let me say one thing. When \-- this is
off television, but on radio. At one time, music was targeted just
toward adults. Then when you \-- now music stations are targeted toward
13-year-olds and 12-year-olds often. And the kind of music content,
lyric content that used to be targeted just toward adults is now aimed
at young children. The medium has changed. But the content hasn\'t
changed or it has been targeted at another age group.

This is the same thing. The content \-- adult content is okay at certain
times or on certain channels. But to sit there and say you have a family
hour when people feel they have to stand guard over their set and not
allow their children to watch certain things and have this happen
repeatedly is a major problem. And without a standard, you see what you
get.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Ms. Miller.

MS. MILLER: Children Now would definitely support a voluntary code of
conduct. I think it just serves as a reminder to broadcasters that they
are a public servant and that they are acting and they should be acting
in the public\'s best interest.

However, I don\'t think that a voluntary code of conduct should take the
place of rules. And I think 30 years of history on the Children\'s
Television Act demonstrates one\'s certainty. Without stringent rules
and regulations, broadcasters are not going to act in the public
interest of kids or of anyone else. So I think, yes, I think it is a
good reminder to broadcasters. But I don\'t think that alone is going to
solve an issue.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Ms. Nugent?

MS. NUGENT: Certainly, it sounds like a fine idea for further
discussion.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Nothing else from our broadcaster?

MS. NUGENT: I am a person of few words. I will let my contents speak for
me.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Thank you.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Yes, Commissioner Powell.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: First, I want to make a few commendations. I watch
a lot of TV and I watch more children\'s TV than I should. But nobody
does it better than PBS. And nobody does it better than, candidly, the
Disney Channel and particularly with full featured movies that are hard
to find for kids that feature values and messages. And we are big fans
of \"The Mall\" and big fans of \"Jett Jackson\", by the way, as well.

And I would also echo the point that Ms. Sweeney made about values and
the social issues, struggling with your kids. To be honest as a parent,
I am less looking for my TV to replace his sixth grade teacher and more
for it to reinforce the values that I care about. I think that should
never be discounted as secondary to brilliant programs like \"Sesame
Street\" which I think much better in the pre-school years than they do
when kids start to grapple with the more sort of complex issues of
childhood on a social and emotional front.

But that\'s \-- one of the things I am intrigued by is we keep talking
about the importance of government intervention which may be fair points
in certain contexts. Certainly, to some degree, PBS is a subsidized
medium, not unlike some of your descriptions of Canadian.

And I think one of the reasons they do as well as they do is that they
have a very different alignment of interests and focus. This is one of
the reasons I think our country should be fully supportive and behind
many of the things they do. We recognize that we change and realigned
the incentives so that those things would be valuable.

But even the programs that Mr. Steyer admitted were the finest,
interestingly enough, are on mediums that don\'t have these obligations.
And that is what I am intrigued by. Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel,
Wham, Boomerang, Discovery Kids, the lists are getting longer and
longer. And interestingly enough, more and more of those programs are
finding their way into other mediums.

And so one of the questions I kind of wanted to explore \-- particularly
maybe, Ms. Sweeney, this is more your question than anyone else\'s \--
what is the business thinking in the choice to put a kids\' programming,
say, on cable instead of broadcast, for example, which you have the
freedom to choose to some degree? And I think relatedly, what are you
seeing in the marketing in terms of the pattern of children?

For example, when I was a kid, Saturday morning all you did was get up
to watch TV. We waited for that day all week. My kids never talk to me
with that hair thing. You\'re too busy. But now, I\'ve got to tell you,
my communities, kids get up and go to soccer. And they get up and run
all day around in mini-vans. And Saturday is not a television day to a
large measure, just in my own limited experience. I am sort of intrigued
by that.

And other things that I find challenging with broadcasting is to some
extent, it is struggling with the zero sum gain. I think Ms. Altman
mentioned it is not that it is not profitable. There is things that are
more profitable. And when you have a limited pie, those things are
tending to win.

One of the things I have been intrigued by this movement to cable is
that a whole channel gets dedicated. You know, a whole genre gets
dedicated to the kids and it allows it to sort of have the volume and
interest. And so I am going to just throw that out to see what the panel
thinks about that because I do see a lot of quality programming coming
into the market. But I see most of it coming into subscription-based
medium.

MS. SWEENEY: Well, speaking for the Walt Disney Company, which is an
unusual company in many ways because it really was founded on the needs,
the desires and the creativity of kids and families. So starting there,
the decision, our decision to put a show on One Saturday Morning or on
Disney Channel is really based on how those two services for kids have
been set up and who they are positioned to reach.

In the case of One Saturday Morning, it is specifically targeted to meet
the needs of kids six to 11 years old. Disney Channel because it is 24/7
as opposed to One Saturday which is obviously once a week is designed to
cover a wide array of age groups.

There really isn\'t any great financial decision that is made. It is
really a creative decision. Recess is targeted to those six to
11-year-olds. Disney Channel\'s take on six to 11-year-olds is really to
reach them with reality programming like \"Bug Juice\" or \"Totally
Circus\" or, you know, other programs like the movies you mentioned.

You know, as far as the marketing, you make a terrific point. Growing
up, I was lucky if my mother let me get to the television set on
Saturday morning because usually the piano was first. But we didn\'t
have all the choices. We had three broadcast networks. We had an array
of lessons. But we didn\'t have the extra-curricular activities that
kids enjoy today.

So really to Commissioner Ness\' earlier point about how to market and
how to reach, we really have to go to where kids are. We really have to
dig deeper. We really have to market harder and we need to think harder.
And I think the most important factor is we really need to be smart
about where they live, what they watch and why they are watching.

And that is why when we promote One Saturday Morning, we are promoting
it on the Disney Channel. We are promoting it on Team Disney. We are
promoting it across the ABC Television Network. We are running spots and
\"Millionaire\" because we know \-- it reminds me of \"It\'s Academic.\"
And, you know, I watch my daughter and husband play \"Millionaire\"
together and see who can get the furthest. And God bless her, she
crossed the \$125,000.00 mark the other week. Unfortunately, she can\'t
go on the air. But \--

COMMISSIONER POWELL: I was going to say that\'s not hard to do. But I
won\'t.

MS. SWEENEY: For me it is. But you do make a good point. And I think we
are in an unusual situation. You have given the number of platforms we
have internally to promote and help kids find the programming on One
Saturday Morning or on the Disney Channel.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Yes, Commissioner Powell?

COMMISSIONER POWELL: If I could just \-- go ahead. Then I wanted to
follow up with Ms. Sweeney on that. But isn\'t there a basic difference
in economics that Commissioner Powell was getting at. In other words, if
the number of kids watching One Saturday Morning was the same as what is
\-- the number of kids that are watching the Disney Channel, wouldn\'t
that be deemed insufficient? I mean, it seems to me that in the cable
model, the men are casting. And so success is defined somewhat
differently than in the broadcasting over the network where we have a
much broader audience-reaching potential.

MS. SWEENEY: Well, we have two very different businesses there.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Right.

MS. SWEENEY: Disney Channel does not carry third-party advertising. It
relies on fees paid by cable operators. Whereas One Saturday Morning
relies totally on third-party advertising. It really does come down to
choice \-- creative choices that you make. A Disney Channel may
commission a series that is as expensive as a series that runs on One
Saturday Morning. But those choices have to be balanced against other
choices that we make across other day parts.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Jim?

MR. STEYER: Yes, Commissioner. I would like to respond even more to what
you were saying, Commissioner Powell. One thing I think that is really
clear to me having a run a media company now for four years is that
leadership is \-- this is going to sound obvious, but leadership is
critical.

I mean, you have the Anne Sweeney at Disney Channel and you have Herb
Scanlon and his team at Nickelodeon, these guys. Their companies are
rated in a kid tradition. They are committed to it. Anne commissions
curriculum for every single series we do with these guys. It is very
serious. It obviously reflects a commitment on their part. And if she
said their company has attritioned that plus they have an ability and in
many cases do produce them in-house at Walt Disney Television Animation
if it is animation or in Nickelodeon\'s case, they also have their own
animation studio.

If you move to the networks though and if you take ABC out of the
equation because of both the leadership and the fact that they have Walt
Disney Television Animation \-- and remember, you all just approved the
Viacom-CBS merger which means basically that Nickelodeon is going to
program CBS Kids Block. You are going to see Nickelodeon programs now on
CBS because there is an economy of scale to do that.

If you look at the other networks that don\'t have that, you don\'t have
the same level of leadership, quite frankly. And they are looking for
the cheapest possible way to meet some relatively unclear mandate to
them on what FCC-friendly programming is. That is how they look at it.
And so they just look for the lowest possible placed alternative in most
cases I would suggest to you.

And the opportunity there is huge because if you can provide a high
quality program with real educational content and \-- there are
producers like ourselves and Sesame Workshop and others who really can
do that in an economically feasible model for those networks, they will
run them. But that is where the rug comes in.

That is where I said to you that either the leadership doesn\'t care
about that or doesn\'t want to advertise to parents what they are
calling educational programming or where they turn to Canadian or
European producers who can through tax incentives and credits basically
at half of the cost of that program subsidize.

And it expensive to produce kids\' programming. On an average half hour,
it can be, you know, \$400,000.00, \$450,000.00 to do a high quality
half hour of animation. You run that over 13 episodes, that is a five
million dollar commitment. And you\'ve got to \-- that financing has to
come from somewhere.

At places like Disney, they have such a strong tradition of in-house
capability and an ability to work with folks like us that they can do
it. But outside of those two, I think we need to see \-- we need
economic models perhaps that need to be revisited.

And Ms. Miller said something earlier that I think this Commission
should at least take notice of now in this regard which is the same is
happening on the internet. We all know how much the internet and the new
digital medium can be a tremendously beneficial one for kids. But you
are running into some of the exact same economic issues there.

And I would strongly urge this Commission to take a look at those
issues, as well, because if we want that medium to be as educational and
as enriching for kids as it can be, we are going to have to look at the
economics of that medium and encourage the opportunity to produce high
quality on that medium just as we need to do that in the television
medium, as well.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: I just want to sum up on my question. I think you
raised good points and I think I can be the first to agree that
leadership is important. But also, my kids never heard of Anne Sweeney
and they never heard of Scanlon. They watch Nickelodeon and Disney
because they are good. And it is interesting that whenever you look at
these weekly ratings, you know, once you get past WWF Wresting, you get
quickly to Nickelodeon.

And back to the Chairman\'s set of inquiry, we should be looking at
where there is success. And it is very interesting to me that we see
success. I think we do see success in a number of the mediums. It would
be interesting to start to consider what aspects of those business
models and financial incentives promote those programming because I
think, you know, even Disney does a wonderful job, but they don\'t do it
out of charitable reasons. I would never expect them to. And so I just
think there is a lot of room to mine there.

I also wanted to say something about Commissioner Ness\' questions about
information. It didn\'t get mentioned in the discussion which seems to
me it should. One of the things that is really entering the market place
that I think might be a very valuable addition to this is the rise of
programming guide technology.

I have been considering, you know, different options, for example,
recently about dish TV or cable. And one of the things that I find most
appealing is the ability to have a much richer experience in the amount
of information about a program in advance.

A lot of these new interactive guides are allowing the potential for
pre-selection of programming, for example, a kids button on the remote
control that allows it to be only the channels that you have selected
based on the information content. I think there is a lot that can be
done with the use of technology. And digital spectrum even over the air
will have some of that potential that I hope gets realized.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Mr. Chairman, can I respond to that?

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Commissioner Tristani.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I just wanted to follow up on a quick question I
have for Mr. Steyer, but also note something that about 25 percent of
American households still don\'t have cable. And a lot of those
households are minority. They are Latinos. They are African Americans.
And for those households and those families, the only option out there
is public television and the broadcasters. And we cannot forget that.
And I am not sure that that statistic is going to change overnight
because I believe it has been pretty steady. So I wanted to note that.

I also wanted to ask \-- and I really don\'t know this. But you said it
costs about \$400,000.00 per program for children\'s programming on
average. What does that compare, if you know, with adult programming for
a new series per program?

MR. STEYER: Remember, that is per episode.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Per episode.

MR. STEYER: Wouldn\'t you agree, Anne?

MS. SWEENEY: And there is a range, too.

MR. STEYER: There is a range depending on whether it is animation or
live action.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: But is it any different? I am just curious, if
you know. And maybe Ms. Sweeney could answer that.

MS. SWEENEY: It is almost impossible to compare. You could produce
animation anywhere, as Jim said, from \$500,000.00 an episode to a
million. And \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: So \--

MS. SWEENEY: \-- a show \-- a reality show on network may be of a
comparable budget.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Okay. So you can\'t give me any comparison.

MS. SWEENEY: No, there really isn\'t one.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Okay. Can anyone? Maybe PBS?

MS. NUGENT: I am not familiar with the specifics of it.

MS. ALTMAN: Well, animation is going to be expensive no matter how you
label it. I think, you know, the question is more in terms of
non-animation cost of an average sit-com or drama series as opposed to
some kind of children\'s show.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I guess I was trying to get at \-- and I honestly
don\'t know whether it is more expensive to produce children\'s
programming, or at least new children\'s programming than adult
programming.

MS. ALTMAN: No, no.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Thank you.

DR. MONTGOMERY: Can I just add the other important thing is that
children\'s programming is becoming a very important target market
because children have increased spending power. And that is likely to
continue.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: We are going to have to wrap this panel up.
Commissioner Ness will have the last question.

COMMISSIONER NESS: I just had one more question. We note about both in
the statute and in the rules providing for broadcasters or station
licensees to fulfill their obligations by contributing to programs that
are aired on another station within the market. This presumably was
focused in part on enabling educational television to get additional
funding to provide more quality programming, not exclusively so.

The question that I have related to a proposal that Henry Geller had
made in a season \-- he\'s in the audience he will be testifying later
about in lieu of having each broadcaster air three hours of programming
that it may or may not really desire to air. Instead, maybe limit the
amount of that requirement. But rather contribute two percent \-- I
forget what you had proposed Henry \-- but two percent of their revenues
to public broadcast so that public broadcast can fulfil that mission for
the public on broadcast television.

Would any of you like to comment on that as a proposal?

DR. MONTGOMERY: Yes, I would. When it was originally proposed when the
Commission was considering the current rules that were put in place in
1996, we were \-- we opposed pay or play which is really what you are
talking about here. And the main reason we opposed it was our concern
that the pay would be too small and the play really would not exist and
we would end up with kids being short changed, that is, with public
television, you know, being given the pennies that really would not help
them create programming.

I think in the digital era, we are reconsidering that position. And I
think that should be one of the options. We are proposing that there be
a number of options to digital broadcasting to serve children\'s
educational and informational needs.

I want to underscore, I think public television is extremely important
and we need to find ways to give it the funding that it requires in
order to serve children\'s needs. Non-commercial content and services
are going to be much more important in this era of highly commercialized
media that would be pervasive in children\'s lives.

So if it can be done in a way that is really meaningful and that would
be a fair exchange and that would increase the amount and the quality of
programming and services available to children in a non-commercial
platform on public broadcasting and digital television, I think it would
be a good idea. And I speak on behalf of my organization only. This is
something we are talking to the rest of our coalition about. So that is
my opinion.

MS. MILLER: I would like to echo Kathy\'s comments. Children Now
actually proposed a pay or play in our comments to the FCC. And we
recommended that with several hesitations, again, the things that Kathy
is mentioning about the idea of commercial broadcasters not paying out
enough to make it really meaningful. In the end, you have a dearth of
programming or quality that is not really good.

On the flip side, the idea that it could create a lot of different
choice and a lot more programming is a good thing. And it is something
that we recommend with hesitations and are also going to be doing some
more work talking to academics about how we think such a proposal could
best serve kids.

MR. STEYER: Well, Commissioner Ness, the bottom line for me would be it
is clear that you need reforms of subsidizing high quality content,
educational content for kids, non-commercial and even quality commercial
content for kids and that we must study that. The Commission can play a
great role in that.

In the meantime, however, while that is being done \-- and hopefully we
are coming up with new solutions and new resources in that regard \-- I
would keep the Commission\'s role that they have done through the
Children\'s Television Act and the regs. which I think overall continues
to serve a beneficial purpose. So I would go pay and play.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Jim. That will have to be the last word.
This has been a terrific panel. Thank you all very much for coming here
and presenting to us today. We will take a ten-minute break and
reconvene at 11:15. We are running a little bit behind schedule. So
everybody needs to be back here promptly at 11:15. Thank you.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: We will begin our second panel of the morning now.
This is a panel that will focus on protecting children from the effects
of sexually explicit or violent programming. For those panelists who
were not here for the earlier panel, we have asked all the panelists to
keep their remarks to five minutes. There is a time clock here. It will
be green for four minutes, yellow for one minute and when it goes on
red, please sum up your comments.

Also, please introduce yourself and your affiliation. We will begin with
Vicky Rideout.

MS. RIDEOUT: Thank you. Good morning. My name is Victoria Rideout and I
am Vice President at the Kaiser Family Foundation. It is great to be
here with you today. And I have been asked to provide information from
several recent studies by the foundation in response primarily to two
questions.

First, what is known about the amount and nature of sexual content on
television? And in 1999, the Foundation worked with my colleague,
Professor Kunkel, further down the panel here to design a comprehensive
analysis of sexual content on television. And the study analyzed a
representative sample of both broadcast and cable TV, covering all
genres other than newscasts, sports and children\'s programs.

The results indicate that more than half of all shows on television
today include sexual content. In other words, if you turn on the TV,
whatever the time of day, whatever channel you are watching, whatever
type of program, the odds are about one in two that you will be watching
a show with some kind of sex.

If you narrow the focus to those shows that are most widely watched,
those that occur on network television, broadcast networks and in the
prime time hours, the odds of encountering sexual content are higher.
More than two out of three prime time shows in the major networks
include sexual content.

Some of it is mild in nature and some of it is more advanced. And our
study found that about seven percent of all shows included a depiction
of sexual intercourse, either actually depicted or strongly implied.

A second question I have been asked to discuss is whether sexual content
on television has an impact on those in the viewing audience. One thing
we know is that television is an important source of information for
young people about sex. Sixty percent of young teens say they get a lot
of information about sexuality and sexual health. They get ideas about
how to talk about sexual issues. They get information about sexually
transmitted diseases, about birth control, about pregnancy, about
relationships from television.

School, friends, parents and TV, that is basically how teens today would
rank their sources of information about sex. But what kind of
information and ideas about sex are young people getting from TV? One
thing we know is that most shows on TV with sexual content don\'t even
attempt to send any kind of a broader message. In the study I mentioned
earlier, we found that only about one in ten shows with sexual content
include any reference to issues such as abstinence, birth control,
condoms or the possible emotional or health-related consequences of
sexual behavior.

But when health information is incorporated into popular shows, TV can
significantly increase public awareness. For example, the Foundation
conducted a study among the viewers of the NBC drama, \"ER\", before and
after an episode in which a date rape victim takes emergency
contraception to prevent an unwanted pregnancy as a result of her rape.
And the percent of viewers who were aware of the existence of emergency
contraception increased from 50 percent before the episode aired to 67
percent in the week after the episode aired.

And when we asked folks where did you learn about this issue, 20 percent
of them volunteered that they had seen it on ER. In the public health
world, that is a very significant impact.

We also know that young people can be informed through public service
announcements on television. On MTV and BET, for example, PSAs on sexual
health are broadcasted frequently in day parts when the audience is
actually watching. And as a result, nearly a million viewers have called
the hotline used in those ads to get more information.

When the Foundation conducted a follow-up survey with those callers, a
third of the ones who were under 18 said that they had talked to a
parent for the first time about a sexual health issue as a result of the
information that they had received. And nearly one in five said they had
been to a doctor to be tested for HIV or another STD as a result of the
information that was part of that public service campaign. Again, in the
public health world, this is a very powerful impact.

So in addition to exploring whether depictions of sex on television can
have a negative impact on youth, we would also encourage the Commission
to explore a companion question. Can the television industry as part of
its public interest obligations contribute in a positive way to raising
awareness about important sexual issues and can do so in a way that is
consistent with freedom of speech and with its mandate to entertain? And
the answer to these questions is clear. Yes, it can.

Public service advertising that occurs at times of day when the targeted
audience is tuned in can be a very effective public education tool.
Recent evidence indicates that the amount of time available to PSAs has
been decreasing and that most of it occurs well after the midnight hour.
We hope that Chairman Kennard\'s recent focus on public service
announcements as a key component of broadcasters\' public interest
obligations will receive the Commission\'s close consideration. With
that, I will conclude my remarks. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much. Ms. Strossen.

MS. STROSSEN: Thank you very much, Chairman Kennard. My name is Nadine
Strossen. I am the President of the American Civil Liberties Union. And
I am a Professor of Law at New York Law School where I specialize in
Constitutional law. I certainly share Commissioner Tristani\'s
frustration at the short amount of time we have for such a broad and
important topic.

And I just want to say at the outset that I listened with great interest
to the opening remarks of the Chairman and all of the other
Commissioners. And I would love to have the chance to engage in colloquy
with all of you, perhaps during the question and answer session during
the very important points you made there, as well as all of the
questions you enumerated for us.

However, I am going to abide by the new technological form of censorship
that we have with us today. Speaking of which, seriously, of course, as
the head of the American Civil Liberties Union, I am profoundly
concerned about the First Amendment issues that are raised by even
indirect forms of government regulation on the broadcast media.

And beyond the First Amendment concerns though \-- and I do have to
emphasize, the First Amendment rights at issue here are not only those
of adults, but also those of minors. I am proud that the ACLU has long
advocated minors\' rights to access information including the very
valuable kind of sexually oriented information on the broadcast that we
have just heard about from the previous speaker, Vicky Rideout.

But there are other rights concerned here, too. And I want to say at the
outset that our view is that all of them are jeopardized by any move to
restrict the kind of content that is being singled out here. Among other
things, the right, as well as the responsibility, of parents to shape
the education and upbringing and values of their own children. That is
as profoundly important Constitutional right which not only the ACLU,
but far more importantly, the United States Supreme Court recognizes and
one that we feel would be undermined by too much government intervention
here.

Last but very, very far from least, of course, is the right to physical
safety, freedom from violence to avoid the kind of massacres at
Columbine that Commissioner Ness, among others, talked about. And here,
you know, many people feel that we have to engage in a trade-off, on the
one hand, freedom of speech, on the hand, freedom from that kind of
horrible, physical violence.

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. We need not engage in
that kind of trade-off. And one of our concerns about the focusing on
the media, some would say the scapegoating of violent and sexual imagery
on the media is what a diversion it is from what many experts consider
to be far more profound causes of violence and inappropriate sexual
content and far more effective needs for redressing that violence and
preventing that violence.

And here, let me not quote the ACLU. It wouldn\'t surprise you that we
would oppose restrictions on the media. But it might surprise you that
in discussions that I have had with Ernie Allen, the Chair or the
Executive Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children who has agreed with the ACLU that stigmatizing the media,
focusing efforts on stopping what images children can see on the media
is at best an ineffective way of protecting actual children from actual
violence.

At worst, it is counter-productive because it diverts us from what
social scientists and other experts have said are far more effective
constructive needs of dealing with not only the violent imagery that is
so prevalent in the media, in television as we have heard.

But as Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth said in his opening remarks,
violence is ubiquitous not only in other media, but in real life. And we
have to concentrate on preparing our nation\'s young citizens to deal
with effectively the images of violence, some appropriate, that they are
going to see on TV screens and some inevitable that they are going to
see in real life, on the streets of our cities unfortunately.

Therefore, all of us have to exercise our responsibility as parents and
as educators to instill critical dealing skills in our young people to
empower them, to empower the parents to help them and not, in fact, to
usurp the parental role through over-intrusive government actions.

Let me just conclude, as I see the yellow light is on, by saying I think
it is quite foresightuous that this important hearing is taking place
today in the same city, on the same day as the Million Family March. As
I am fond of saying, the ACLU is a pro-family organization. We just
don\'t believe that big brother is an appropriate member of the
traditional American family. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much. Mr. Corn-Revere.

MR. CORN-REVERE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. My name is
Robert Corn-Revere. I am a Partner at Hogan and Hartson and an Adjunct
Professor of Law at Catholic University. I am also a former staff member
of the Commission. And so it is good to be back and this time speaking
and writing in my own name.

The testimony today represents my personal views. I am not testifying on
behalf of any client or any other group. The prepared statement that you
have in front of you actually reflects a discussion of broader First
Amendment issues. When I was first invited to testify, it was with the
understanding there would be a panel on those broader issues.

So I will touch on that briefly and then talk about the specific content
areas on this panel. As the FCC contemplates new or expanded public
interest requirements for broadcasters, it should keep in mind that the
current latitude it currently has to regulate broadcast content is
really a limited exception to traditional First Amendment analysis.

If any of the content-based regulations that are often proposed for
broadcasters were considered for a minute being applied to other media,
they would be instantly stuck down in being unconstitutional. New
requirements for broadcasters, therefore, would place added stress on
this analysis and I think would be likely to lead to a Constitutional
challenge.

Spectrum scarcity upon which this lesser degree of Constitutional
protection is generally based is really no longer a viable theory,
something that I discussed more in my prepared remarks. Beyond that, the
social compact theory that the government may demand content controls in
exchange for giving spectrum I think is no more valid.

When Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote of a marketplace of ideas, I
don\'t think he was suggesting that the government could be the
purchaser or the media companies could be the sellers of Constitutional
guarantees. Beyond that, the Supreme Court has held that federal
subsidies for public broadcasting to not empower the government to
restrict the editorial freedom of those licensees. I think the same
principle applies here whether you are talking about a \"subsidy of
spectrum\" or a subsidy of taxpayer dollars.

Specifically with respect to the content issues that are being discussed
in this panel, I think that the same thing would be true in terms of the
Constitutional analysis. Regulating violence in the media is a far more
complex issue than is being presented generally in Washington policy
debates. And so I commend the Commission for raising this issue today. I
particularly commend the Commission for bringing balance to testimony
that so often is missing in Congressional hearings on this subject.

Now, while there isn\'t time to get into a specific discussion of the
Constitutional issues involved in regulating violent content on
television, I think that it is useful to point to an excellent Law
Review article that I would commend to the Commission. I would ask that
it be made part of the record by Chief Judge Harry Edwards of the United
States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, called,
\"Regulating Violence on Television.\" It was published in 1995.

In that article, Judge Edward took the available social science data on
violence and analyzed it in light of First Amendment concerns. They
reached the conclusion that, \"When it comes to televised violence, we
cannot imagine how regulators can distinguish between harmless and
harmful violent speech. We can find no proposal that overcomes the lack
of supporting data.\"

They added, \"We cannot imagine how a regulator might fix rules designed
to ferret out gratuitous violence without running the risk of wholesale
censorship of television programming.\" Now, I raise this in part
because this article came up in earlier testimony at the Senate Commerce
Committee on the violence safe harbor bill about a year ago. And one of
the other witnesses who was a social science expert responded that Judge
Edwards has no business opining on social science issues. After all, he
is merely a lawyer. He is really not equipped to understand these
issues.

And I guess it reminded me most of the line from Dr. Peter Vankman, Bill
Murray\'s character in \"Ghostbusters\", when he said, \"Back off, man.
I am a scientist.\" I think these issues are fully understandable for
those of us who are not social scientists. I only have a master\'s
degree in social science. I think I can understand these issues. And I
think others can, as well.

The other issue I would like to touch on is the overall question of what
is increasingly being lumped under the general topic of inappropriate
content. Last May, an organization called the Parents Television Council
released the results of what it called a study which purported to show
that offensive content on television had increased since the advent of
the V-chip. It listed 25 shows that it considered to be the biggest
offenders.

Now, of these programs, nearly half had won or had been nominated for
Emmy awards. They were the highest rated programs on television. And as
a matter of fact, their list sounded much like a roll call of the best
in television. The worst offenders according to this list included \"The
X Files\", \"NYPD\", \"ER\", \"Homocide\", \"Frasier\", \"Friends\", and
it goes on and on.

The reason I mention this is particularly in light of the testimony of
Ms. Rideout when she says that \"ER\" provided valuable information
about sexual content, about sexual information. And yet if the exercise
becomes simply trying to police the airwaves for mentions of
\"inappropriate content\", I think we may be missing the ball and
censoring or at least threatening to censor what is the best of
television.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Mr. Corn-Revere. Mr. Kunkel.

DR. KUNKEL: My name is Dr. Dale Kunkel, the University of California,
Santa Barbara. I am a social scientist. But since I am here talking
about law and policy as a social scientist, I am happy to receive Mr.
Corn-Revere and all others in the legal profession talking about social
science.

I am one of several researchers who led the National Television Violence
Study, or the NTVS, a three-year project sponsored by the NCTA that
examined the depiction of violent behavior across more than 8,000
programs. I have also completed a major study funded by the Kaiser
Family Foundation that assessed the accuracy of the V-chip ratings
applied to programs of other television industry.

In my remarks today, I will briefly summarize key findings from each of
these two studies. The NTVS project represents the largest investigation
of media violence yet produced by the scientific community, involving
more than a dozen of the nation\'s leading media researchers from four
universities. The central element of the project is a content analysis
of the nature and extent of violence on television.

Over a three-year period, from 1994 to 1997, we systematically examined
the content on 23 of the most frequently viewed channels on TV. In our
research, we did not simply count up all violent actions as most
previous studies had done. But rather, we carefully analyzed the context
surrounding it.

The presence or absence of different contextual features has been shown
to either increase or diminish the likelihood of harmful effects from
children\'s exposure to TV violence. By tracking the pattern of
contextual features associated with most violence on television, our
research allows us to evaluate the risk of harm from children\'s
exposure to different types of violent material.

At the end of the three-year NTVS study, we reached several key
conclusions. First, violence is widespread across the television
landscape. Turn on a television set, pick a channel at random. The odds
are about six out of ten that the program you encounter will include
some form of violence. An average week of programming on 23 channels
contains more than 6,000 violent interactions. More than half of the
violent shows contain lethal acts and one in four of the programs with
violence depict the use of a gun.

Second, most violence on television is presented in a manner that
increases its risk of harmful effects on child viewers. More
specifically, most violence follows a highly formulated pattern that is
both sanitized and glamorized. By sanitized, we mean that portrayals
fail to show realistic harm to victims. Immediate pain and suffering by
victims of violence is included in less than half of all scenes of
violence.

More than a third of violent interactions depict unrealistically mild
harm to victims, grossly understating the severity of injury that would
accrue from such actions in the real world. In sum, most depictions
sanitize violence by making it appear to be much less painful and less
harmful than it really is. And by glamorized, we mean that violence is
performed by attractive role models who are often justified for acting
aggressively and who suffer no remorse, criticism or penalty for their
violent behavior.

Third, the overall presentation of violence on TV has remained
remarkably stable over time. I have submitted a table of data that
reports findings from three recent TV seasons which illustrates the
tremendous consistency across virtually all of our measures. That
consistency clearly implies that the portrayal of violence is highly
stable and formulaic. And unfortunately, this formula of presenting
violence as glamorized and sanitized is one that actually increases the
risk of harmful effects for children.

At the conclusion of the NTVS study, the Kaiser Family Foundation
commissioned another project to \-- or a project to evaluate the
accuracy of the ratings applied to programs by the television
industry\'s V-chip system. This study provides us with two key
conclusions, the first of which is actually good news.

In general, the age-based ratings for most general audience programs are
applied in accurate fashion. Although the TV-NA rating is almost never
used, the study indicates that programs with the strongest and most
troubling violence tend to receive a TV-14 rating and that TV-G programs
generally contain little or no violence, just as the rating system
indicates. Clearly, this represents a good faith effort on the part of
the industry to apply age-based ratings accurately to their programs.

But the second point is not good news. Content descripters are not being
applied to the vast majority of shows that contain violence. The TV
industry agreed to add content descripters in response to public concern
that the original age-based rating system did not provide adequate
information for parents. Several content descripters, including a V for
labeling violent programs, were added to the system.

The V-chip study found that the vast majority of programs which
contained violence did not receive a V rating. While 21 percent of
programs with violent material did display a V, 79 percent did not. Now,
you might ask, are the programs that lack this V rating really the ones
that feature an isolated scene of violence of some limited form of
violence. But the answer is no.

Our study indicates that these \-- we found 318 programs in one week
that did not get the V rating. They averaged five scenes of violence
with a moderate level of intensity. This means a parent who would choose
to block out programs with a V rating who might reasonably assume they
are screening out this violent material would be making a serious
mistake in using the system in this way.

To conclude,it is well established by a compelling body of scientific
research that TV violence poses a risk of harmful effects to children.
The NTVS project demonstrates that most TV programs contain violence and
importantly that most violence is presented in a fashion that increases
its risk of harmful effects.

The most recent attempt to address this concern is the V-chip
technology. But the findings from the Kaiser Foundation study finds a
serious threat to the utility of the V-chip. If violent programs are not
accurately labeled, then even the most pro-active, well-intentioned
efforts of parents who use the V-chip device cannot effectively reduce
children\'s exposure to TV violence. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Dr. Kunkel. Dr. Cantor.

DR. CANTOR: Thank you. My name is Joanne Cantor. And I have been doing
research on the impact of television on children at the University of
Wisconsin for more than 26 years, focusing on the consequences of
exposure to media violence and the impact of television and movie
ratings. I have also written a book titled, [Mommy, I\'m
Scared]{.underline}, that helps parents help their children cope with
our violent media culture.

I presented many of these arguments in greater detail at the recent
American Psychological Association Convention. That speech, including
reference to the original research that I mentioned, is available on my
website, www.joannecantor.com, for anyone who wants further detail.

I know you have already heard the standard arguments about media
violence research. It is true that the meta analyses that combine all
the relevant studies make a clear case that viewing media violence is a
significant contributor for violent behavior. But rather than focus on
criminal violence, I want to highlight certain results that show
psychological harm in a more immediate fashion. I will give three
examples of the types of harm I am talking about.

First, children often imitate what they see on television. And this
imitation is not limited to playful, harmless behavior. For example, a
national survey of Israel middle schools confirmed that when World
Wrestling Federation was introduced in the mid-\'90s, it led to a
national epidemic of serious playground injuries including broken bones
and concussions because children, even those who knew that what they
were seeing was not real, imitated the violence they saw.

Second, exposure to media violence increases hostility levels, not just
immediately after viewing, but for a substantial period of time
thereafter. And these increases in hostility can make an otherwise
neutral interaction seem like a provocation. For example, one study
showed increasingly hostile interpersonal interactions even a day after
viewing intensely violent movies.

Third, a growing research literature shows that exposure to media
violence often induces intense fears which can produce nightmares and
interfere with a healthy night\'s sleep. For example, a recent study in
pediatrics reported a positive association between television viewing
and sleep disturbances among elementary school children. Indeed, nine
percent of parents said that TV had caused their child to have
nightmares at least once a week.

Other research shows that stumbling into the wrong program or movie on
television can induce debilitating anxieties that last for months and
even years. Incidently, the recent uproar over the Nike ad shown during
the Olympics, the one that depicted a young woman being attacked in her
bathroom by a chainsaw-wielding lunatic, demonstrates how vulnerable
young children are to gory and grotesque images, even very brief ones.

It is important to recognize that the remedy for these harms is not
censorship, but public information. Just as parents need information
about nutrition and labels that indicate the contents of what their
children eat, they need an honest appraisal of the risks to their
children\'s mental health that are posed by different programs. It
should then be up to the parents to judge their child will imitate the
violence, become increasingly hostile or be unable to sleep after
viewing.

If these are effects parents want to avoid, they should be able to
decide whether they prefer to limit their child\'s exposure or to work
with their child to counteract the effects. Parents can\'t make these
decisions if they don\'t get this information. The risks are not being
communicated fairly by the media. At best, the picture is confusing.

What is more, although parents have already one potentially valuable
parenting tools, TV ratings and the V-chip, they aren\'t hearing about
them. Broadcasters claim to be promoting the rating system. But the
proof is in the results.

According to a recent Annenburg study, fewer parents are now aware that
we have a TV rating system, 50 percent, than knew about TV ratings in
1997, 70 percent. And a woefully small percent know how to interpret the
ratings. I have yet to meet a parent who knows what the D in the rating
system refers to. And I wonder how many people here do.

Of course, broadcasters should be urged to program in a responsible
fashion. But even if they decided to broadcast only quality programs at
the level of \"Shindler\'s List\" or \"Saving Private Ryan\", parents
would still need to know the content and risks in advance. This is
because children of different ages are affected differently by the same
media images. We know from research that young children are apt to miss
the intended meaning of a program. A masterpiece that would edify a
teenager might very well traumatize a younger child for months.

Clearly, censorship is not the answer. But information is. And in
addition to information about programs, parents need more predictability
in the content of commercials. Children tuning into family-appropriate
shows like the World Series or the Olympics should not have gory and
grotesque images from advertising inflicted upon them.

Lots of people say it is the parents\' responsibility to raise their
children. And as the mother of an 11-year-old son, I agree. But in order
for us to do a good job of parenting, we need three things: unbiased
information about the risks and benefits of media exposure;
understandable, timely information about what is in a program; and an
assurance that our children won\'t be ambushed by horrifying images and
inappropriately placed ads. These actions should be at the top of the
list of broadcasts\' obligations to children. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much, Dr. Cantor. Dr. Jenkins.

DR. JENKINS: Mr. Chairman, I am Henry Jenkins, the Director of the
Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. For the past 17 years, I have
made the study of American popular culture the central focus of my
teaching and research.

Many of the others testifying here come from traditions of experimental
or quantitative research in the so-called media facts. I represent a
different tradition in media studies that employs more qualitative
methods including those derived from anthropology, history and literary
analysis.

My research addresses the meanings that get attached to cultural symbols
and the way that people in specific social and cultural contexts
interact with media. I come here neither as an apologist for the media
industry, nor as an advocate for media reform, but as a concerned
citizen who cares about both the quality of our culture and the
protection, of course, of civil liberties.

So often this gets framed as the free expression right of broadcasters
against the public interest. And I feel rather strongly as a father that
I have a public \-- there is a public interest of my right to determine
what culture my son consumes based on my values and not someone else\'s.

And then I have a compelling public interest in making choices that
allow me to deal with complex subject matter, not simply predigested
form, and that my son has certain rights as an adolescent to carve out a
cultural space for himself by which he explores his identity and his
values.

And one of the things that struck me since Columbine has been a tendency
to use protecting children as a code word for, in fact, regulating
adolescents. And I think most of us might agree that we need to set
different standards that are appropriate for teens versus children. And
we need to be careful as we go forward that we are not infringing on the
rights of teens in the name of protecting smaller children.

Despite the cultural rhetoric that has come out of Washington since
Columbine, cultural works are not carcinogens. Cultural works are
complex and contradictory. They are open to many different
interpretations, subject to various unanticipated use. Popular
culture\'s complex relationship with its consumers cannot be reduced to
simple variables or tested through live experiments without regard to
larger cultural context.

Quantitative research needs to be read not in isolation, but in
relationship with more qualitative approaches. Out of respect to many of
the noted researchers on the panel, I should make clear that my concern
is not when media research affects research per se, but really the way
in which media research gets mobilized by activists in the context of
public policy debate.

The best media effects researchers qualify their findings and few argue
for a direct causal link between consuming media images and performing
violence. A more careful analysis would read violent programs as one
cultural influence among many, thus, having different degrees of impact
upon different children and is not sufficient in and of themselves to
inspire an otherwise well-adjusted child to engage in acts of violence.

Media activists often strip aside those careful qualifications, claiming
the computer games are murder simulators, that media violence darkens
children\'s minds or pollutes their heart. Media activists are often
indifferent, for example, to even crudest distinctions between
developmental stages, taking studies made about young children as if
they applied to everyone under the age of 18. The result is a caricature
of the media effects research which allegedly underlines their
recommendation.

They often are made without regard to the context in which the events
occur in stories or their emotional tone. Often we are told to depict
something is to advocate it. To advocate it is to cause it as often the
focus is on localized images and not the range of stories we as a
culture tell about violence or what they mean to the people who consume
them. And often, the focus is on measurable biological responses, and
not on the conscious activity of media consumers as they make sense of
what they have seen.

Humanistic research paints a very different picture. First, media
consumption is thought to be something active, something we do, not
something passive that happens to us. Media technologies are tools and
we can use them in a variety of different ways, some constructive, some
destructive.

Second, media consumption is a process. We work on media content over a
long period of time. Immediate emotional reactions are only a part of
what we need to understand if you want to predict real world
consequences in media consumption.

Third, different consumers react to the same media content in
fundamentally different ways as it is fit to their larger understanding
of the world. And so the universal claims offer a fundamentally
inadequate account of media\'s social and cultural impact.

Fourth, media consumption is more often creative than imitative. All of
us construct our own personal mythologies from contents made available
to us through mass media. And we are drawn toward images and stories
that are personally meaningful to us because they match the way we see
the world. We use them as vehicles for better or for worse to explore
who we are, what we want, what we value and how we relate to other
people. And we explore the broader range of ideas and experiences
through our fantasies than we would care to act upon reality.

Finally, media representations are read against our perception of the
world that is built up through countless direct experiences. Media
content is more likely to reinforce than fundamentally alter our
existing prejudice and predispositions.

Let me cut to the quick and say what I think could be done in this area.
I support much of what was said in the last panel about a proactive
desire to create diversity. I would be opposed to regulation that
restricted content.

I think there are three areas that we need to work on. One is a broader
composition of government investigations into media violence. We need to
include qualitative humanistic scholars, anthropologists, critics,
experts on play in the mix as we begin to deal with these questions. And
they need to be there along side media effects. In Europe, in Australia,
mixed panels have been put forward and develop more subtle solutions.
And I think that is a really important thing to do.

Secondly, and I would agree with Joanne Cantor, education, education for
kids who need to be taught to be critical, ethical and creative users of
media, and education for parents who need to be given information that
allows them to make meaningful choices. And that information has to
include not just a blunt reading, but some values that determine what
that rating is set by.

I often find that the ratings communicates privilege, some values over
others as a parent who cares about homophobia, for example. When I watch
a sit-com that deals in a caring relationship between a lesbian couple
that has a higher rating than a sit-com that makes random jokes about
heterosexual infidelity, it is troubling to me.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Please wrap up, Dr. Jenkins.

DR. JENKINS: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. Mr. Peters.

MR. PETERS: My name is Robert Peters. I am President of Morality in
Media. On October 7th, my wife and I saw, \"Remember the Titans\", a
film based on the experience of a high school football team forced to
integrate in 1971.

I remember as a child listening to college football and running out to
play football in the yard, street or park. I remember in high school
watching professional football players on TV and then trying to imitate
them during practice in high school football games. I also remembering
the rewarding experience of playing on a racially integrated football
team in college.

As I walked out of the theater after seeing \"Remember the Titans\", I
wanted to hug every African American I saw. Hugging aside, the film was
a powerful reminder that racial reconciliation ought to be a high
priority on everyone\'s list.

But as I walked home, I wondered how I would have felt if I were still
16 and if \"Titans\" were a violent film glamorizing the behavior of an
integrated group of high school football players who fight a local drug
problem by beating up drug dealers. Being an aggressive person by
nature, I might have felt like joining in.

There are, of course, reasons why most kids wouldn\'t. They know right
from wrong. They love and respect their parents. They don\'t want to go
to prison. They aren\'t emotionally troubled, angry at the world. They
don\'t have to prove how tough they are. They\'ve got better things to
do.

But it doesn\'t take a social scientist to realize that many teens can
rattle off a list of good reasons why they shouldn\'t join a gang of
vigilantes. They are the vulnerable ones. As my wife and I talked about
\"Titans\", we were glad it didn\'t portray athletes cursing, having sex
and abusing alcohol and drugs.

Of course, if such behaviors were portrayed negatively as bigotry was in
\"Titans\", kids would presumably benefit from the lesson. \"Shindler\'s
List\" was shown in public schools and on prime time broadcast TV
because educators and the media believed it would have a positive
influence on youth.

The media then tells us that there is no proof that entertainment
glamorizing and promoting anti-social behaviors influences youth. But if
it does, they add, it is up to parents, not the media or government, to
address the problem. I am not trying to get parents off the hook. They
are in great measure responsible for how their kids behave.

But it is no secret there are other influences on children. I will spare
you my written comments on that testimony. I would be voting for
Hillary. But to some extent, I think it takes a village to raise a
child. Included in that village are broadcasters which should be doing
all in their power to reduce the risks that children would be harmed by
programming. If they had done so, we wouldn\'t all be here this morning.

That brings me to the role of government. While I agree that government
can\'t protect children from all sexual and violent content, I also
reject the notion that the First Amendment prevents government from
enacting effective laws to help protect children from such conduct.

One existing law that could at least help is the broadcast indecency
law. I won\'t add further on my written comments, but it is a law that
isn\'t being enforced against television stations. And it would help. It
wouldn\'t solve the whole problem, but it would help.

There is, again, talk about enacting federal laws to regulate
children\'s access to violent entertainment. Not surprisingly, the media
is again waiving the banner of the First Amendment, asserting with its
typical pomp that the Constitution protects the right of media to pour
graphic, gratuitous violence down the throats of children as long as it
is theoretically possible for parents or angels I guess to shield them
without government\'s help.

I understand that the media have legitimate concerns about government
attempts to regulate violence. Certainly, the definitional issue
probably being the preeminent one. But unlike some Supreme Court
Justices, I think there is a real difference for Constitutional purposes
between a law that bans speech that government disapproves of and a law
regulating children\'s access to smut or graphic violence which
incidently burdens, but does not block adult access to that speech.

And quickly jumping over, in written comments that we submitted earlier
in this proceeding, we asserted that the V-chip is not the whole answer
to this problem. I certainly agree it is part of the answer. I would
comment that to my knowledge, virtually \-- it may be true that most
violent programs are accurately rated.

But to my knowledge, virtually every prime time program, certainly a
large number are rated either G or PG which means that according to the
industry, ever adult sit-com on TV is okay for certainly kids other than
seven and eight-year-olds. And if that is the way \-- if appropriate \--
if a parent blocks out the \-- you know, if she wants to block out some
of these sit-coms, she would wind up \-- he or she, I should say, would
wind up blocking virtually every program on prime time television.

If you go up to PG-14 or TV-14, you virtually block no prime time TV
programs. How are you going to use a V-chip when almost all of the prime
time adult-oriented sit-coms are rated G or PG which means according to
the industry, they are okay for kids? Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Mr. Peters. I\'ll get my hug from you
later. Thank you all for the presentations that you made today. There
are a lot of divergent and very interesting views presented. And I want
to ask each of the panelists one question that I will think help this
agency focus attention on what actions we should or could take in this
area.

We are going to ask each of you if you could single out one thing that
this agency could do, the most significant thing, the most important
thing that this agency could do to combat the relationship between
violence and sex and the outcomes in our society. And, obviously, the
premise of my question is that I do believe that there \-- certainly
with respect to violence, that there is an incremental negative impact
of television violence on our society and particularly with our kids.

So I would like each of you to answer that question. Just give me one
thing if you had one shot. And I know for Ms. Strossen and Mr.
Corn-Revere, this might be a difficult question for you to answer. But
let\'s start with Ms. Rideout.

MS. RIDEOUT: Well, I should preface my remarks by saying the role that
the Foundation takes in all of this is to be the agency that helps
provide the data and information and research that you policy-makers
need and find helpful as you consider these questions rather than to
take particular positions on issues.

But I guess I would say that where our research seems to point is in two
direction. It is, first of all, in doing more to empower parents with
information and tools, to make their own decisions as to how they want
to monitor their children\'s media consumption and secondly, to probably
consider measures you can take to increase the amount of positive
educational and informational programming that is available, whether it
is public service announcements, other long-term, long-form public
informational types of programming or actual content themselves.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you. Ms. Strossen.

MS. STROSSEN: Thank you for that provocative question, Mr. Chairman. I
do have some constructive suggestions, although first I have to decent
from what I think is the premise in your question that the relationship
between violence and sex in the media is \-- on the media and real-world
outcomes, number one, is substantial. And I will defer social scientists
who have, indeed, questioned that including most recently in the FTC
report that came out a couple of weeks ago. The FTC was very careful to
stress the kind of ambiguity and complexity that we heard from Mr.
Jenkins. Secondly \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Ms. Strossen \--

MS. STROSSEN: I\'m sorry?

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: \-- have you read that report?

MS. STROSSEN: Yes, I have.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: You have?

MS. STROSSEN: Yes. And I have read the appendices \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Do you recall whether they actually studied that?

MS. STROSSEN: They had a review which was \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: But did they undertake any new research on that
as far as \--

MS. STROSSEN: Absolutely not on \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: \-- they were recording the same kind of studies
that their study \--

MS. STROSSEN: No, it was not the focus of their study.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: That\'s all I wanted to know.

MS. STROSSEN: But they \-- but I think it is important because it is so
often misstated as these same meta studies are referred to as if
everybody agrees that they show a clear and simple causal connection.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I will save a question for later.

MS. STROSSEN: Okay. And, secondly, I think it is important to emphasize
that some of the real world outcomes, if we are going to accept a causal
connection, then I think we also have to accept the sum of the causal
connections would be with positive real world outcomes such as Ms.
Rideout described, more information that will help people to lead
sexually more healthy lives and to counteract violence in a positive
way.

So I agree with the suggestions she made. In addition to encouraging
broadcasters to include serious, valuable discussions of \-- in
treatments of violence and sex \-- and we have heard many examples from
\"ER\" to \"Shindler\'s List.\" And by the way, \"Shindler\'s List\"
should get every single rating. Right? It\'s got violence and sex and
language and indecency. And yet I don\'t think any of us would want to
deny a parent the choice to have a child of a certain age and maturity
see that in a certain context.

That leads to my next point which is the blunt instrument of the V-chip
cannot be enough information for any conscientious parent. And obviously
\--

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Actually, I just asked one thing that we can do \--

MS. STROSSEN: Yes.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: \-- not that we shouldn\'t do.

MS. STROSSEN: Yes. Well, I am saying you can encourage the serious
treatment of \-- and the programming of materials such as \"Shindler\'s
List\", such as \"ER\", despite the fact that they would be getting
these seemingly negative ratings. I think in terms of the technology, as
I understand it, the move toward digital broadcasting would make it
possible to go beyond the necessarily over-simplified.

I think we have a lack of meaningful information from those four
letters, to provide much more descriptive and analytical information
including reviews with respect to not only those categories, but other
kinds of criteria such as Dr. Jenkins suggested.

Other parents might be interested in racism or sexism or, you know,
anti-religious views. To really amplify the amount of information that
is easily accessible over the screen so that a parent can make a more
informed choice.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Corn-Revere.

MR. CORN-REVERE: Thank you. I knew I was going to be getting difficult
questions today. So I\'m glad that Jackson, my eight-year-old son, gave
me his lucky rock to keep in my pocket while I was testifying. And you
anticipated my answer or, as you anticipated, non-answer. I really
don\'t think there is anything that the Commission can legitimately do
to regulate what I consider to be a matter of taste.

Often, this debate is framed as one of regulating things that are
harmful to kids. And yet I think what really this comes down to in many
cases is a matter of taste. And nothing better illustrates this than Mr.
Peters\' testimony from a few minutes ago when he was talking about the
uplifting nature of \"Remember the Titans\" where he said that it
presented such good messages. But what if it had presented harmful
messages and it promoted, you know, kids going out and doing terrible
things and being violent and all of that?

I think just as much needs to cross our minds if \"Remember the Titans\"
encourages our kids to go out and become football players. And would we
consider that to be something beneficial, or go out and play soccer. As
a matter of fact, if you are just talking about indices of harm, in
1997, according to the National Safety Council, there were 14 deaths
among high school and middle school football players and more 300,000
\-- 360,000 football-related injuries.

And it is not just the chance that kids participating in activity may
have mishaps. There are darker influences, as well. The National
Association of Sports Officials says that sports violence during and
after games is spiraling out of control, so much to the extent that they
have started offering hospitalization insurance to sports officials.
Several times a week every week, there are reports that police need to
be called to sporting events because people have been encouraged to go
out and engage in these activities.

So it really is a question of a broader cultural issue, as Professor
Jenkins has said, how do people respond to various things. I generally
agree, sports is a healthy thing. But if we are simply talking about
being presented with something that may cause harm, this is a clear
example of that. And yet, there are no hearings on whether or not we are
going to continue to have Monday night football.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. So we should do nothing. Dr. Kunkel.

DR. KUNKEL: If it is not too presumptuous, I would like to tell you one
thing I think you shouldn\'t do and one thing that you should. My first
comment that you shouldn\'t do is trying to follow up very briefly on
some of the remarks that I think question the legitimacy of concern
about media violence.

I am not concerned that the Federal Trade Commission in their report did
not issue a definitive statement about the impact of media violence. It
wasn\'t their job. I am willing to stand by the summary of a quarter
century of media effects research that has been summarized by the
National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Surgeon General, the National
Institute of Mental Health, the American Medical Association, the
American Psychological Association, all of which very clearly conclude
media violence contributes to real world violence and aggression.

It doesn\'t cause \-- no one can pinpoint the cause of any civil act of
human behavior. Did someone who committed a shooting in a school do so
because of media violence? Did they do it because of their parents? Did
they do it because of their peers? There is no one single cause. And so
it is a straw man to ask the question does media violence cause in this
fashion real world violence.

So one thing you shouldn\'t do is to contribute to the
over-simplification of an issue and ask us some of these straw man
questions. What I would recommend you should do, that I think the
Commission can do is to encourage \-- and I will leave it to your
discretion of the strength of the hand \-- but to encourage more
accurate labeling of violent programs.

I think more than one member of Congress has said that the current
system takes the V out of the V-chip. That is to say that the age-based
ratings do not allow the identification of violence because they are
labeling programs for sex and violence and language and other issues.

That is why \-- and there was such dissatisfaction with the original
system introduced by the industry. That is why that the child advocates
and public and parent organizations lobbied and were successful in
getting the television industry to amend the V-chip ratings to add
content descripters.

The best data available today suggests those content descripters are not
being used. And frankly, if a parent were to use them, I think it would
be a terrible outcome because you would think you are screening violence
when, in fact, you are not. Under the current system, a parent cannot
screen for violence. If V labeling was applied accurately, they could.
And then the V-chip would have greater utility.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you. Dr. Cantor.

DR. CANTOR: Yes. If there is a way to encourage through incentives or
whatever way you can do this in your overview, better information for
parents ranging from, as Dale said, better ratings and information about
programs and also coverage of the issue \-- the coverage \-- the news
coverage of this issue by the television industry is very biased by
economic factors.

Not only in general, but if you look at the coverage of any controversy,
there are networks that don\'t have an economic stake in a particular
movie or program are the ones that cover it. And the ones that are being
criticized don\'t. I mean, it is as simple as that. If there is a way of
promoting fair public service announcements which say here are the risks
to some children; you as a parent should know about this and make your
own decisions whether to shield or counteract the effects, those are the
kind of \-- that\'s the kind of information that we need not always
saying, well, you can\'t prove the Columbine massacre was caused by this
particular movie; therefore, there is no impact.

I agree with Henry, it is a very complex situation and parents need to
get this information so that they can make the best judgements about
what the effect is going to be on their own child or build in parenting
that helps children cope with this.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Dr. Jenkins.

DR. JENKINS: I share some of the skepticism raised about the premise of
the question and including the premise the government is the best place
to deal with this problem. But let me say two things \-- two areas which
I think the FCC could be constructive in in terms of this.

The first of these I think is in broadening the conversation about this
question, to include a broader range of scholarship when we have
government investigations of the question of media violence. I think it
is very important that you have the qualitative as well as quantitative
research at the table.

As it happens, I \-- as a former student at the University of Wisconsin,
I have enormous respect and personal affection for Joanne Cantor who was
a faculty member in my program. We disagree on some things. But I think
if we sat down together and talked about this question, we might come up
with better conclusions than our context where we are both given five
minutes in a polarizing climate that pushes us further apart. And I
think it is important to have conversations right now about those
questions.

The second is by using the FCC to lend moral support to the importance
of media, literacy and education in K through 12. It is far too late for
us to be talking about this. But it is too important not to, to say that
kids need to be taught to creatively, critically and ethically engage in
materials of media culture. And through our program at MIT, we are
trying to develop some national guidelines on curriculum in the area of
media literacy that reflects the changing media environment.

And we would love to see organizations like this one stand up and say
schools should be involved in this process of preparing kids to deal
with the complexity of the current media environment.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Doctor. Mr. Peters.

MR. PETERS: The first thing would be to enforce the broadcast indecency
law against television stations which would not solve the whole problem.
But I think it would uplift the moral tone of television significantly.
The second thing, on the violence question, I am aware of two cases,
Supreme Court cases, that have addressed violent entertainment exposure
to children, a 1948 case, [Winters versus New York]{.underline} and
[Interstate Circuit versus City of Dallas]{.underline} in 1968.

In both cases, the Courts said that they would \-- made it clear I think
that they weren\'t saying that government doesn\'t have the power to
regulate children\'s access to violence. They knocked both laws down on
the basis of vagueness. And I think that obviously their biggest problem
\-- if one believes that there is some power in government to regulate
violence to protect children, the question becomes what types of
violence.

One suggestion in specific would be to have a two-year study by the FCC
with some monitoring of its own and receiving complaints and then issue
quarterly reports expressing opinions or identifying programs that the
Commission is troubled with in terms of the time they are aired or
perhaps broadcast versus HBO, et cetera.

And as my \-- the previous speaker suggested, get feedback on those
programs with the hopes of trying to come up with some intelligent
guidelines that would certainly guide the industry. Let them know what
the public expects and if necessary, hopefully, would provide the basis
of legal standards.

And I would \-- as a closing point, I am sure that I was mildly very
pleasantly surprised when I read the guidelines that the industry itself
came up with as a result of Senator Simon\'s antitrust exemption. I
think there are a couple of holes in their guidelines that are big
enough to drive a truck through.

But I tell you, industry did a marvelous job of setting forth the
difference between the types of violence that it thinks can cause the
harm to kids. I mean, they have given the Commission and the industry
itself a good working point. But I think if there is going to be any
government regulation to hurdle of what types of violence are going to
be regulated, certainly the goal is not to get rid of all of violence.

And I would add that if society comes down as hard on football as Mr.
Corn-Revere has, I am sure that we will all be back here with hearings
on the effects. But I think most Americans believe that with all the
problems sports have, they have more positive influence on young people
than negative. And that is why we put up with some pretty shocking
things at times.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I want to thank all of the panelists for your
candid, provocative, analytical thoughts today. And I appreciate the
different vantage points that we are addressing here and that is another
reason I would have liked to have more time to explain these issues.

I would have liked to have heard from a doctor, maybe a pediatrician who
could talk to us first-hand about the different influences in children
and how they act, maybe from a child psychiatrist or a psychologist. And
not that all your views aren\'t good. But I would have liked to have
heard from the real health experts. I think that would have been a very
good and necessary point or perspective to have today to add to your
group perspective.

I also would have liked to have heard from an average parent. I know it
would be hard to find one, let\'s say, you chose one. But it would be
good to have a parent or maybe a couple of parents sitting at the table
here telling us what troubles them.

With all that, a couple of things comes to mind. First of all, on the
first one that says, of course, it is a parent\'s responsibility first
and foremost and not only responsibility, but right to monitor and watch
and care for the children.

In the perfect world, if we could have parents carefully monitoring and
watching at all times, we might not have to be here because they might
say, well, maybe we shouldn\'t have televisions in the house at all or
maybe they would be there all the time sitting with their children
making sure that there aren\'t any harmful or inappropriate programming
addressed to them.

So I agree with everyone that is sitting here that the first and
foremost thing you can do is get more information to the parents, more
information, more accurate information. I hear that too much, that a lot
of the ratings are not accurate. So that\'s no good.

Frankly, there is another problem that no one has addressed here, is
that not everybody is rating. Most everyone is rating, but not everybody
is rating and not everything is rated. So that is a whole other subject.
So you might think I\'ve got this V-chip, I am going to block X and a
lot of stuff that you don\'t want your children to see is going to come
through.

So more information, more empowerment, more tools for attempting to deal
with this great new world. But let me ask about this because I have a
seven-year-old who is very young for his age. I also have a 19-year-old
teenage daughter. And their ability to deal with the world is very
different.

And I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. But I am told \-- and I
have been a mother \-- that it may be very hard to give a seven-year-old
and under or an eight-year-old and under any kind of \-- or the critical
views skills that we all talk about to be able to discern and be better
viewers.

So I ask you that because at the end of the day while most parents want
to do a good job, a lot of parents can\'t be home because they are
working a job or two or are the only parent to be there doing the job.
And then there are some parents who just don\'t care. So what do you do
about the children of those parents, but also the children of the best
parents who are at those ages where they just don\'t have the skills
because their minds are still forming? They are impressionable.

And I really want to direct that in particular to Professor Kunkel and
Dr. Cantor, if I got that right, because I know you have dealt with
these issues.

DR. KUNKEL: Well, first let me say that I am a huge support of the value
of media literacy. And the point that I think you are addressing here is
the age-related differences children\'s cognitive abilities develop over
time. And there are, indeed, limits to what one can convey or accomplish
with a very young child.

Below the age of somewhere between six and eight, children do not
differentiate well between fantasy and reality in television content. It
is a complex issue. There are different ways of defining
fantasy-reality. But prior to the age where they can discriminate well,
they believe that everything on television is real. Very young children
think that commercials are on to give actors a break and that it is all
happening in real-time and so forth.

And so given that our concern about the effects of media violence is
focused most seriously on young children and given that there are limits
to what can be accomplished with media literacy with young children. I
think that is why I at least for one am not willing to look at that as
the ultimate solution or the panacea here. But I think that we do need
to pursue initiatives to make sure the industry or to encourage the
industry to present violence more responsibly and to give parents as
many tools as possible to supervise their children.

DR. CANTOR: Okay. I will follow up on that. I agree with what Professor
Kunkel said. In terms of younger children, you have to be very careful
because it is very hard to un-do an effect on a young child, much harder
because they can\'t use their reasoning skills. They can \-- you can
talk until you are blue in the face, as I say, about it is not real. It
doesn\'t mean that much to a young child.

So for a \-- so that is why I think parental education is so important.
If parents knew that their kids are going to respond that intensely to
what they see on television, they wouldn\'t leave their child home alone
in front of the television set. Now \-- but it is hard to get this
information out and everybody knows that a TV is a babysitter that works
very well at a certain level.

I think to the question of \-- and I agree, above this age, you know,
you can begin media literacy, but don\'t depend on it. As far as older
kids, I think media literacy is the place to go in parental education.
But talking about \-- you were talking about the parents of the kids
that don\'t care.

And a lot of people say, you know, I happen to be the only person I know
in the world that has the V-chip. A lot of parents say the people who
have the V-chip are not the ones who need it. It is everybody else\'s
kids. Well, I would say that is \-- you have to help the \-- if you are
preaching to the choir, help the choir first to get a handle on what
they can do to help their kids.

And then have the choir sing louder and louder because just as we had to
start with a very small group of parents who used seatbelts and then
moved it out so that people were \-- people who didn\'t usually care
about these things came to learn about it, I think we have to start
helping the parents who already concerned do a better job by giving them
tools and then get that message out further as the parents who use these
tools and information, find positive results.

So I think we can only start with \-- I don\'t think we can tell these
parents how to raise their children who don\'t appreciate the
consequences. But we can work toward educating them so that they will
see it, as well.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: But what do we do about the parents who for
whatever reasons don\'t care or can\'t or won\'t react to this?

DR. CANTOR: I don\'t know anything we can do except continue to try and
work on them and also work through the schools and teachers and get
teacher training and that sort of thing so that kids might be getting
better information and skills through schools if they don\'t get them
through home. I mean, there is only \-- there are only so many things we
can \-- we can only encourage parents to \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Raising that and resurrecting a broadcaster code
of conduct is not a bad idea or \--

DR. CANTOR: Oh, no. I don\'t think it is a bad idea. I think
broadcasters should be encouraged to behave responsibly. I don\'t think
they should be encouraged to make only bland programming. And I \-- you
know, I also would like to stress the point that even great programming
can be harmful psychologically to kids who are too young to see it or
who don\'t see it with a parent and just stumble into it.

And I think one of the extra responsibilities, one of the reasons why
broadcasters get targeted more often than, let\'s say, people who do
magazines or even video games that kids buy is that broadcasting comes
into our homes automatically. And we have to \-- if you want to see the
political debates, we have to have a television.

So if we want to see the political debates, we get a lot of programming
automatically into our homes that we would never choose if we were
choosing it one thing at a time. And that is why they should be \-- I
would hope the broadcasters had an extra responsibility because of this
automatic entry into our homes, to provide information and tools that
would help parents do a better job of parenting.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: Well, this is really an educational panel.
I have learned a lot, as well as with the last panel. Commissioner
Tristani, you mentioned you wished there was a parent or two on the
panel. Well, I think many of us feel we are parents. We described your
situation.

When I discussed with my wife last night this panel, the reaction was
swift and strong and I got an earful about the problems about she has
and other parents may have about content of all sorts, not just on
television. The petitions that Commissioner Tristani have collected is
\--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Excuse me, Harold. Can I just clarify that? I
didn\'t collect them. They were sent to me. And actually, they were sent
to the FCC in my care.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: The petitions on the table next to
Commissioner Tristani are from some very frustrated people. I come at
this from a \-- I would like to repeat the question that Chairman
Kennard raised, but I would like to pose it a slightly different way,
maybe reflecting your perspective, to ask each panelist to describe one
thing not that this agency can do to protect the children of America,
but what can parents do independent of what this agency does. And it
doesn\'t have to be in the broadcast context.

But Commissioner Tristani is exactly right. Every day we get lots of
e-mails. And I would have to say the vast majority are about some
content-related issue. And I strongly believe that this is at some point
not the role of government, not the role of the First Amendment.

But there is a crying need out there. There is a lot of anger. And I
would be very interested in ideas that the panel might have of what
parents can do on their own. Maybe it is go to work with the supermarket
and say would you please take those magazines out of the checkout
counter, which I must say are more invasive and come \-- you go to the
store to buy wholesome things. And then you go to the checkout counter
and you are bombarded with images and ideas that are things you try to
keep your children\'s eyes away from.

MS. RIDEOUT: Well, I would be happy to take a crack at answering that. I
mean, one tool that parents have obviously at their disposal is the
V-chip. And it is interesting, the V-chip to me is the only piece of
media technology that I can think of that has absolutely no vested
interest behind it. There is no one with a stake in its success. There
his no one with an interest in marketing it or informing parents about
it.

It is, in fact, an orphan technology. And the result is that, you know,
about 40 percent of parents have never even heard of the V-chip. And
even among those who have heard of it, very small minorities understand
either how shows are rated, what kinds of shows are rated, what the
ratings mean.

In one of the Kaiser Foundation studies, we found that only 17 percent
of parents with children under ten could name one of the two ratings
that are specifically designed for children\'s programs. Only four
percent of them knew what the FV stood for, which stands for fantasy
violence for those who might not know. But it is the only labeling for
young children that has \-- gives you any indication of the presence of
violence in the programming. Only four percent of the parents with young
children knew what that meant. And, in fact, a lot of them thought it
meant family viewing.

So, obviously, more information in that \-- parents would need more
information in that regard I think to even have the V-chip be a
realistic option for them as to something that they could use. I mean,
another thing is we hear from parents time and again that they are very,
very concerned about the impact of both sex and violence on television
on their children. However, some of the studies the Foundation has done
indicate that for those parents, there may be more that they can do
within their own homes in terms of monitoring what their children are
watching.

In one of our studies called \"Kids in Media at the New Millennium\", we
found that television was on most of the time in 42 percent of
children\'s homes, just on most of the time. For kids eight and older,
two-thirds of them say television is usually on during meals. Two-thirds
of them are allowed to have a television in their bedroom. More than 60
percent of them say there are no rules in their family as to how much
television they can watch, what kinds of television they can watch. And
95 percent of the time that they were watching TV, they were doing so
without a parent there.

So I would say if parents are deeply concerned, they could get the
televisions out of their children\'s bedrooms. They could turn the
television off sometimes, especially during meals. They could watch with
their children so they have a better idea. There is lots of \-- you
know, a better idea of what their kids are seeing.

There is lots of reasons that Commissioner Tristani mentioned that
parents may have a difficult time with this thing. They may not be home.
They may have other demands on their time and so on. But those are some
steps that some parents could take.

MS. STROSSEN: I welcome the expansive nature of the question,
Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth. And maybe I am interpreting too broadly.
But if the concerns are what many people feel is an adverse consequence,
and some of my fellow panelists have said, adverse consequences of media
violence, number one, increase violence against young people. We want to
protect our young people\'s physical safety. And, number two, we want to
decrease their sense of fearfulness which many people also attribute to
media violence.

First, in terms of safety, far more young people are endangered in
automobiles and die in automobiles. The seatbelts were referred to,
drinking and driving by young people. That should be a high priority.

In terms of fearfulness, here I am also going to get to I believe in
criticizing the media. And I do believe in encouraging them to do more
of one thing and less of another. I think they should put on more
positive programming. I think in terms of the news coverage of violence
and crime is out of all proportion to reality. Obviously, any degree of
violence or crime in the schools or anywhere else is too much.

But I don\'t think there has been enough publicity about the steadily
and dramatically decreasing rates of crime that we have in our society
including the public schools. So I think that the sensationalizing of
those tragic incidents that occur does a disservice to the extent they
make all people in our society including our young people over-estimate
how likely it is that they are going to become a victim of violence
outside the home when most of them were more than the victims of
violence in their own homes and in the streets.

When we get to the role of the media themselves, I think that the last
point that Vicky made is an extremely important one. That parents should
play the active role throughout their kids\' interaction with every kid
of medium. And I see you shaking your head, Commissioner Tristani.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I am not shaking \-- I understand.

MS. STROSSEN: I mean, because there are some parents who don\'t do that,
obviously. And that is a larger problem that goes far beyond media. It
goes to nutrition and health and everything.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: My point was not only are there some parents that
won\'t do that. Most parents are too busy to do that.

MS. STROSSEN: Exactly.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: That is a reality of modern life which we can\'t
predict.

MS. STROSSEN: Yes. And so maybe the solution is even a much broader one
then is within the mandate of this Commission. It may have to do with
providing child support. And I don\'t even want to get into that. But
that may be the underlying root of the problem here.

I think it is very important as we talk about newer media that tend to
spur people\'s fears and concerns, to put it in historical context and
to recognize that, you know, with every new medium, parents have been
very concerned.

And I think that responses that work for comic books and that work for
books should also work for television which is not censorship, not
prohibition, not restriction, but affirmative encouragement, steering
kids toward materials that are particularly useful for them. That is
what the American Library Association has done with every medium. It is
now doing it with the internet. It did it in the past with books.

The code that the ALA subscribes to is that everything should be open to
kids on every medium, including video games and some that are the least
popular in public perception. But we should affirmatively encourage kids
to seek out those sites and those shows that professional educators and
experts including those with the public health background say are really
positive for kids.

And that is what I was trying to get to when I talked about the limits
of the V-chip. I think if this Commission could encourage the use of the
expanding spectrum space to come up with something that I would call the
choice chip that gave parents the full range of information on the
screen that they can get when they go to a library and go to the
children\'s section of the library. Now, these are materials that are
particularly recommended for kids. And here are the detailed reasons why
and the reviews. That would be positive.

MR. CORN-REVERE: I also appreciate the spirit of the question,
Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth. As the father of four children ranging in
age from 12, or almost 13, to five, this is a very significant issue in
our household. So it is not a question of whether or not something can
be done versus nothing that can be done. It is really a question of who
should be taking action.

And as parents, I think our obligation is first to speak to our children
and to be involved in the choices that they make, to be aware of what
they may watch, what they may come across and to make choices that are
individualized to each child.

Commissioner Tristani, I noticed you mentioned that you thought your
seven-year-old was young for his age. And I understand that concern as I
think of my own kids and have to try and decide for each of them what
may be appropriate or what may not be. It is one of the most difficult
things that I do in life, is trying to make sure that those choices are
appropriate.

So I think it is important for parents to be involved with that and to
set limits. And for that reason, I am big believer in media literacy. I
think it is a woefully neglected area. So that people really don\'t have
a real awareness of what they may be witnessing. And that is one of the
things that we try and do at home.

What do you do about the households where you don\'t have as caring an
environment or where parents are too busy? It does create some difficult
issues. Whether or not that is the occasion for government regulation is
a more complicated question and something that I think we have to
approach with an awareness that two-thirds of American households don\'t
have children in them according to Census Bureau statistics. And so it
makes it difficult to create a rule that fits the needs of everybody.

DR. KUNKEL: It is a cliche to say take responsibility. But I will say
that because you asked for the best advice. The thing that I might add
that is unique is that most of the attention that is devoted to a
parent\'s responsibility in this realm is focused in the communication
process between in this case television programming and the viewer. It
is focused on the receiving end of that communication process. How can I
limit what my child sees? How can I co-view with my child to perhaps
help shape and interpret the meaning that they will make of the content
they are watching?

Parents know that or most parents know that. And there is a lot of
effort to share that information on helping those \-- that end of the
equation. But what I would recommend to parents is that they also take
more proactive responsibility at the source end of the communication
process. And that is to convene information back to the industry about
how they feel about programming.

There, of course, are some examples where that has worked successfully.
Professor Cantor talked about the Nike ad that aired and many people
complained about that. It was taken off immediately. We don\'t see many
examples of that.

And I am very clear that most parents feel powerless, that they feel
that they are just the lone voice and that they cannot accomplish a
meaningful input on the process of what content goes out over the
airwaves. Thank goodness for citizen activist groups like CME and others
that provide some channeled role to channel parents\' voices. But I
would encourage parents to attend to both sides of that equation, source
and receiver.

DR. CANTOR: I agree with Professor Kunkel. And, in fact, I do a lot of
speaking at parent groups and other groups that want to know what they
can do. And what I say is, well, television and other media are making
too much money on programming that is potentially harmful to some kids.

But parents even if they cut back a little bit, there is going to be
enough of it that the parents are never going ever be able to say, okay,
well, now I don\'t have to worry about it. And even if they have the
V-chip, they have to worry about it.

So what I say to parents is know what your kids are viewing. You can\'t
take anything for granted. Watch with them and talk to them about it.
Look at the other perspective. I\'ve been doing research on getting kids
to look at the same media violence from a different perspective and it
has an opposite effect.

Also, get them on your side in the sense that if you are authoritarian
and say I am the boss here, this is what we watch, this is what we
don\'t watch without any reasoning behind it, without going through and
saying what are some of the negative effects on other kids that you
would like to modify, you are going to get them running to their
neighbor\'s house. And that is not going to be a good solution, running
to the neighbor\'s house to watch it there.

If you can get them to internalize some of the values that you have that
extend to what they choose to watch on television, that is the best you
can do because they may be out of your control pretty soon. And this is
a part of growing up. And I agree about speaking up, speak up locally as
well as nationally.

I got a program moved in Maury Povich\'s show which was showing live on
television the results of paternity tests so that little kids learned on
his show he is the father, not he is your father. That was on right
before \"Pokemon\" in my locality. So that kids who tuned in two minutes
early for \"Pokemon\" saw \"Maury.\"

I called up and said this was not \-- this just couldn\'t be because
\"Pokemon\" was so popular with the five to ten-year-olds. And they
said, well, at the end of the month, we are going to look at what the
labels are like and then maybe visit this. And I said I don\'t think I
can wait until the end of the month. I am going to write a letter to the
editor of the local paper and I will send you a copy so you will be
ready to \-- when it comes out, you can respond to it. I said this very
politely.

Well, they called me back and moved that show within ten days. And I
think if we use \-- and they have also told me that most \-- that if
they don\'t hear from parents, they think everything is okay. And I
agree, a lot of parents don\'t call up because they think there is
nothing to be done about it.

But particularly if a broadcaster pushes the envelope a little further
than we though the should and nobody calls, then they say, okay, we can
do that again. So it is really important to speak out directly and also
make a public statement in your local paper. And you might get more
action.

DR. JENKINS: As a father of a 19-year-old, I do take very seriously the
parents\' responsibility in this area. And let me describe a little bit
of what we did in our household to deal with this question, knowing what
I know about the culture around media.

Starting at about the age of three or four, we sat down and were telling
a bedtime story to my son. We had my son tell us bedtime stories which
we typed into the computer, we made into books that he illustrated them.
And we sent them to parents and grandparents as Christmas gifts and as
gifts on other major holidays. That made it special. We used a space
where we talked together about the things that mattered to my son. And
he was encouraged to creatively rework the contents of the environment
around him.

Now, in that space, a lot of stuff about television came up including
stuff that was on television when I wasn\'t watching. It was an early
warning of things that my son might have seen that was traumatic or
disturbing or that challenged the values that I had as a father. It gave
me a space every evening where we could talk together about the values
of the media and where I could encourage him to think of himself as an
active, creative and ethical user of media and not simply someone
passively absorbing the messages the media sent over the airwaves.

I talk to many parents who will go to Little League games even though
they hate baseball or listen to off-key performances of Suza even
though, obviously, that is not necessarily that pleasurable because it
is important to the kid. Well, I think we as parents have an obligation
to be attentive to the popular culture our kids consume, not because we
like it or not, but because it is important to the kid and our
relationship to it.

And out of that relationship I built with my son, he is here with me
today. He is a student at George Washington studying in media and
creative writing. We still talk regularly about the content of media and
popular culture and the values that it portrays. And I think we have a
relationship.

Secondly, I think as parents, we can use the resources of digital media
to trade notes back and forth with each other. I don\'t think ratings
provide enough information for me because their values are very
different in the assumptions they are making than mine are. I think a
medium that allows us to really talk both negatively about popular
culture we don\'t want our kids taught and even more importantly,
positively about forms of culture we want other parents to be aware of
is something we should foster.

And I would love to see a merge out of these debates, a kind of
organization, a public organization, neither commercial nor
governmental, that does for the cultural sphere what the League of Women
Voters does for democracy; that is, provide a space for people to talk
about issues, to compare information and to allow us to make informed
choices about the culture that our children achieve. And I think in the
digital age, we have got to find a way that we can do that.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Very interesting. Thank you. And Mr. Peters.

MR. PETERS: Since I\'m not a parent, I won\'t try to give advice. But if
my mother were alive, she would tell you learn to pray and get all your
\-- and ask all your friends to pray because oftentimes that is the only
thing you will be able to do.

But I would like to make a couple of comments on what the broadcasters
can do very quickly. And one of them is to time channeling. I mean, we
don\'t think that time channeling is the whole answer. I mean, you
can\'t be putting on the Playboy Channel after 10:00 we don\'t think. We
don\'t care what, you know, some people thing. But we don\'t think. But
it is a big part of the answer.

I just \-- my \-- I don\'t watch much commercial prime time TV. But my
wife kind of hooked me into watching re-runs. And \"Seinfeld\" happened
to be \-- they run at 11:00 p.m. in New York City. And I can understand
why people like the program. It is tremendously funny. And to me, the
only consistently objectionable thing about it is that every second or
third week, somebody is in bed with somebody new. And, of course, it is
a morals-free environment.

Well, I\'m not trying to ban \"Seinfeld\" from television or even
broadcast. I would assert it is not a suitable program for prime time TV
when virtually every kid is still up. It is a late evening program.

And if the industry would just learn that there are times and places for
things and \-- one other thing \-- and I am going to stop. But that as
the world of channels grows, there will become \-- there becomes less
and less excuse to put certain types of programming in a medium you know
you are going to reach virtually every kid that watches television.

I mean, I am not the expert on this high definition television. But I
understand it can break off into new channels. Well, if that is true,
then some of these channels ought to be subscription. Let adults choose
to bring them into their home. It is a compromise. But that is part of
the answer to this problem. It is not either-or. It is not do nothing,
leave them all in the parents\' care. That is not the solution.

And the industry itself could solve this problem if it were willing to
do it and maybe take a bit of a bite in the pocketbook for the short
term while the American public learned that during certain hours of the
TV evening or in certain mediums, you weren\'t going to have every
adult-oriented comedy showing. But they would still be on television. So
I will stop with that.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you. Commissioner Ness.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Thank you. First, I want to thank everyone who has
testified on this panel. I appreciate your comments. Second,
particularly, I want to thank those of you who have been engaged in
providing studies and to really examine these issues. Kaiser Foundation
in particular has really provided us with some terrific information to
chew on. Dale, I know you have been doing this for a kazillion years.
Joanne, the same.

Second, I endorse and highlight what several of you have said with
respect to critical viewing skills, media literacy. Extraordinarily
important. I know NCTO and others have put out materials for schools and
for families that have been particularly good at helping to educate
children to provide them with the tools necessary to view programming,
particularly when parents are not sitting there at the same time.

Third, we talked extensively about what is the role of government in
this exercise. And one of the biggest roles of government I believe is
to provide a public forum as we are doing today of the discussion of
these extremely important issues.

And I would like to suggest, once again, that it is \-- we are not
talking about government subsuming broadcasters. What we are talking
about is broadcasters, not only do they have First Amendment rights. Of
course, they have First Amendment rights. I am not questioning the
ability to provide this programming.

But let\'s not use \"Shindler\'s List\" as a shield for justifying
anything and everything that is on the air that is gratuitous violence,
that is gratuitous sex. It should be broadcasters using their rights as
\-- in a way that is responsible with serving the public. Once again, if
broadcasters could simply look at what they are showing \-- are they
proud of what they are showing? Do they feel that this is making a
public contribution to society?

We spend very little time on this earth. And it would be nice to be able
to use that time wisely to benefit our communities. And that includes
entertainment. Entertainment is extraordinarily important for society.

But once again, if broadcasters could simply ask for each program that
is put on the air, is this something that I as a broadcaster am proud of
or is it something that, frankly, I just assume my family not watch.
Given that, I think that would go a long way towards helping all of us
to address a lot of the issues that are facing society today.

And not to fingerpoint either because we can \-- we do spend an awful
lot of time discerning if this is a direct causal effect or it doesn\'t
have a direct causal effect or the like. But once again, is there
something positive that can be out there? And Ms. Strossen also pointed
out that it is great when you do have some positive things that are on
the air. And if there are ways of encouraging that using the bully
pulpit, that goes a long way.

And, Dale, your comment with respect \-- I believe it was your comment
with respect to parents conveying information back to the broadcasters.
It is critical that if parents believe that what they are seeing is
inappropriate, is a deterioration of the values of society, whatever it
might be, if that information is communicated back to the broadcaster,
back to the advertiser, that that will help to engender this public
discourse that is so vital to achieving what we would like to see. And
that is our holding the quality of programming that is available to us
over our free, over-the-air system.

And in that context, I would also point out, we have talked a lot about
what children see with respect to sex, with respect to violence. There
has also been a tremendous increase in just degrading of humanity on
television. I happen to be \-- I think we all have been receiving in all
of our e-mails about a program that was aired recently on \-- one
program on Howard Stern that was particularly degrading of women.

And I just \-- without going into the details of that program, once
again, we need to think about what are the messages that we are
communicating in society and is there a way of just improving that
public discourse. So I want to thank everyone.

I do want to ask one quick question. And we have just about run out of
time. And I want to give my colleague an opportunity, also, to ask some
questions. Is there any \-- do you think that there would be any value
to a larger code of conduct on the part of broadcasters or is that just
guiding mere words on a sheet of paper with absolutely no room for any
meaning?

MS. RIDEOUT: Well, one thing that I would say in that regard \-- and
this goes back to the question about what parents can do \-- is one
thing parents can do is remember that these are their airwaves. And they
can inform themselves about what they think broadcasters\' obligations
should be in exchange for their free use of these airwaves. And they can
support elected officials who share that perspective and contact the
Federal Communications Commission with their perspective on that.

And just another related point on the issue of parents is that in forums
like this, it seems to me we always end up \-- there always is a
tendency to look to somebody who isn\'t in the room to talk about what
that entity can do. In this instance, parents. In other instances, gun
manufacturers, you know, video games, et cetera.

And I just think one rule of thumb for all of us when we are engaging
this issue is to focus on what those of us in the room can do in a
positive way. And in this instance, you raise one of those options which
is the voluntary code of conduct. And that is something we just don\'t
have a policy position on. But I would encourage parents to recall these
are their airwaves, to inform themselves about that issue and have that
reflected in their choices of elected officials.

MS. STROSSEN: And if it is truly voluntary, it might just be empty
rhetoric. If it is labeled as voluntary but has behind it an implicit
threat, you don\'t do it yourselves, then the government will do it to
you, obviously, that raises First Amendment problems.

But I think the most important point by far is the one that was just
made by Ms. Rideout and was also made by a couple of the other speakers
earlier on, that parents under-estimate \-- parents and non-parents for
that matter, citizens, under-estimate the economic power that they have.

The mass media are nothing if not responsive to economic pressures that
can be brought by citizens who mobilize to voice their complaints either
directly or by threatening their sponsors to withdraw their sponsorship.
That\'s a democratic way to influence our media that is completely
consistent with freedom of speech. Indeed, it is an exercise of our
First Amendment rights.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Anyone else?

DR. KUNKEL: Yes, but my point is that there are codes and then there are
codes. The NAB code that was abandoned in 1982 was very proactively
monitored and enforced by efforts of the industry. In contrast, there is
a different self-regulatory code that is maintained by the Council of
Better Business Bureaus and enforced by the Children\'s Advertising
Review Unit. This establishes standards for advertising directed to
children.

For all of the television ads directed to children around the country, I
believe they have a staff of two or three people that engage in no
proactive monitoring or enforcement. They do respond to all complaints
they receive. However, because virtually no one in the country knows
there is a self-regulatory code, they receive no complaints.

So my point is that there are codes and there are codes. A code that was
widely recognized and adhered to I think would be a value.

DR. CANTOR: I think a code that was publicized, whether it was regulated
or not, would have a positive effect because it would cause discussion.
It would make perhaps hypocracy more apparent. It would just \-- even
empty rhetoric is something that people can focus on or when they have a
complaint about something, they can compare it to the code.

And so the reason I am really angry about this is it is against your own
code. So I don\'t necessarily think it will \-- people will create a
code and then follow it right away. But anything that allows the
industry to recognize, even to say \-- make lip service to its
responsibility beyond profits I think would be great for the public
interest in this argument.

DR. JENKINS: I think the industry has enormous responsibilities in this
area. I\'m not sure whether a code is the best way to form those
responsibilities. But I think, first of all, we need to figure out what
the appeal of violent entertainment is. There has been a lot of
discussion of effects, but not a lot of explanation of why teens are
drawn to this kind of material. As I look through research and
understand the appeal, we may discover it has less to do with blood
thirstiness and more to do with the fact that it expresses a world view
or a sense of anxiety or a sense of angst about being a teen that could
be expressed creatively through other channels.

I think also we need to think about creativity. And we have been \-- our
program has been intervening in the area of video game violence by doing
workshops with game designers to teach them about story telling, to
teach them about character and narrative, to talk about other ways of
achieving emotional impact that don\'t depend on gratuitous violence.

And I think that is a constructive intervention between the academic
community and the industry to foster creativity rather than simply
slavish adherence to any set of rules which is necessarily not going to
be exact for every circumstance.

MR. PETERS: And that would be that the code is a result of interaction
between the industry and the public. It would be much more likely to be
a sound code than if the industry just goes back and concocts something
that more often than not would be designed to protect its own interest.
But if the industry were willing to sit down with a cross-section of
people and try to hammer out some guidelines for programming in various
channels, my guess is that there would be some workable compromises.

Would it make television perfect? No. Would everybody be happy? No. But
it would be a whole lot better than it is today. But that\'s what I
think it would take. They would have to listen and everybody would have
to do some giving and taking on it.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Commissioner Powell, did you have anything?

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Yes, I am going to try to be brief because I know
we are out of time. And I will not ask a question and ask each of you to
respond to it in the interest of time and try to just do it as a
summary. If you want to respond, you can, or don\'t.

First of all, I think I want to nominate Mr. Jenkins for parent of year.
That is one of the more creative activities I have ever heard of. And I
am going to attempt to try it if I can make those boys sit long enough
to do so.

Which also raises the question \-- I will just make a brief comment
about parenting. One of the challenges of setting rules about TV and
saying turn it off is they may want you to entertain them. And that is a
challenge. And then I think that I see in a lot of households that
people don\'t do that because it means then they look at you and expect
you to do something to provide activity and entertainment for them which
some parents have trouble doing.

Nonetheless, the point I really wanted to emphasize that he mentioned
about parenting is \-- which I find struggling with an 11-year-old who
responds heavily to pop culture, blocking them off is to lose them. I
have learned this very quickly, that I have to sit down and watch and
understand what he is responding to and understand the meanings he sees
in them or he will shut me out.

This stuff is too prevalent in society for me to pretend that I have the
ability to keep him cloistered from it. The number of times we say you
can\'t watch a movie, he says, oh, I saw that movie. And I say where on
earth did you \-- down at Ricky\'s house. It is amazing the degree to
which I can\'t control his environment. And I don\'t think that is
anything we or anyone else is going to be able to change. So learning to
find these meanings that we relate to is important.

I would just summarize by, one, really complimenting the panel for
staying in the area of understanding that these are complexities,
ambiguities and subtleties that are not susceptible to easy and quick
solutions or even single solutions, whether they be from a
Constitutional matter or from a social research matter. And I think that
is really important.

I think part of the problem I find is when you start talking about how
to define it or put meaning to it, you immediately are intertwining
different sets of values, different judgements about morals and biases
that we as a diverse nation do not uniformly share.

I am shocked the degree to which I have friends who I have the highest
respect for who think programs that I wouldn\'t want my children
anywhere near are absolutely appropriate and don\'t want to hear anybody
talking to them about why they shouldn\'t watch WWF Wrestling. Indeed,
sit down and watch it with them. I can\'t explain that. But I understand
that in my democracy, I am supposed to preserve that \-- their right to
do so.

The other thing I would say about the effects literature which I find
intriguing, I clerked for Judge Edwards who wrote that article. So I
want to say one thing about it. He embarked on it believing that he
would find an answer to do it. I will point out to you, I was a clerk
when he formulated his idea, he believed \--

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Which means you wrote the article.

MR. PETERS: No, I didn\'t. I got out of there just in time.

(Laughter.)

But it was interesting to me because it was a journey in search of
finding that solution and ultimately he didn\'t. And one of the reasons
that he didn\'t was the point that when you get to the effort of trying
to define and infuse these things with some values, you really run into
a problem.

I don\'t know why \-- we talk about glamorization and sanitization.
Well, you know, when I was a kid, John Wayne and the Green Berets and
the plethora of westerns and Road Runner did all the same thing. They
glamorized and they sanitized. We have aspects of violence and
aggressive that we value as a society. That makes us even harder.

What is a just war? How do I explain the presence of the most powerful
military on earth and this willingness to use it? How do I explain when
you should hit someone rather than let them pick on your little sister?
How should I explain what it means to defend my home and my property
against intrusion? These things are \-- you know, how do you explain the
violence and aggressiveness in sports that we revere? All of these
things I think make these issues very complex, subtle and dangerous.

And I think the caution that I want to emphasize that I think all of you
all did in your own way is that there is \-- the cause and effect thing
is the wrong question. And I think Dr. Kunkel said it right. It is a
contributing factor. But the reason we have to be cognizant of that is
it is also meaning there is no grand solution just for this problem that
will have the kind of impact that we are talking about.

It is not about letting parents off the hook. But it is understanding
that parents will make different value judgements than we might. To me,
it is not about it is all the parents or it is all the government. But
when you get into an area where someone is going to have to make a value
judgement about their kids, to me that is the parent. Whether they are
willing or not to exercise that, at some point, I think that is sort of
the price of democracy. But I won\'t ask any questions because I am
hungry.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. we will take another ten minutes because
Commissioner Tristani wanted to ask another question.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: No. And I don\'t need ten minutes.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: And if anyone else wants to chime in. First of
all, I want to agree with \-- and I stated this myself before \--
something which Professor Kunkel first brought up and was echoed and Ms.
Strossen brought up, that there is no more powerful tool for parents
than contacting the broadcasters and their sponsors and saying this is
not something we like.

It works. It is very effective. I think parents and families are not
aware of how effective that is. And that is a message I give constantly
and I give to a lot of the groups that have come personally to complain
to me about programming they think is inappropriate.

And at this moment, I would like to recognize either Ms. Santine who is
here in the back of the room from Puerto Rico who belongs not from the
group that presented these petitions, but from another group in Puerto
Rico who is concerned about these issues. I have again and again
counseled them that aside from contacting their government which is
their right, that they should contact the broadcasters because economic
tools are the most powerful tools. So I wanted to highlight that.

A lot of our discussion today \-- and I think it has been a very good
discussion, although I would like to have a prolonged one and some other
players \-- has focused \-- most of it has focused on violence. And I
think there is much more research on the effects of violence on our
children. But a concern that I have read about and I am concerned about
and a lot of parents are concerned about is the effect of sexual
material.

And one issue that I think was picked up in maybe your \-- one of the
Kaiser studies, it has been picked up by others, is concern about the
effect of sexual programming in contributing to the ever-increasing
sexual assertion of our young teenage girls at younger ages. They are
not only becoming aware about sex, but engaging in sex at younger and
younger ages. And I know there is not a lot of evidence on that.

But are you \-- are any of you \-- and I am sure you must be concerned
about this \-- that it might be a contributing factor? And what can we
do about that? And I would like you to address that first, Ms. Rideout.

MS. RIDEOUT: Sure. Well, we do know from the body of research on
television\'s effects overall that television and culture more broadly
helps shapes young people\'s attitudes, knowledge and behavior across a
wide variety of issues. When it comes to sex, we know that media affects
knowledge. And we know that it is a source of ideas for young people as
to what is the norm, what are other people doing, what are expectations,
what is the norm for gender relations and gender roles and so on.

Quantitative studies on direct causality that you are speaking of are
even rarer for effects on sexual behavior than for violence. In fact, we
have quite a few in violence, but not many on sex. The National
Institutes of Health have just funded a number of research projects in
that realm that should help close that gap.

We certainly know that there can be a positive impact from programming
such as public service advertising and also from \-- in the content of
specific shows. And one final thing I just wanted to say is as you
consider the array of options before you, there is a voluntary code of
conduct in the television industry today.

Broadcasters are making voluntary decisions as to what they think is
appropriate or is not appropriate to put on the air every single time
they decide to show something. And the results, the content that we have
on television is the result of those voluntary decisions.

MS. STROSSEN: I would just like to say that I was fascinated recently to
read their very comprehensive survey about parents\' attitudes about
sexual education and sex information. And contrary to some stereotypes
and preconceptions, it showed that the vast majority of parents are
hungry for their kids to get more information about sex including over
the media.

I think the assumption is that they are going to be sexual beings
anyway. I don\'t want to give them \--

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Ms. Strossen \--

MS. STROSSEN: Yes, yes.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: \-- and this is meant for everyone because I did
want to explain in my question. But my concern is not about having good
information which gives you the good health information, but is maybe
casual treatment without talking about consequences like pregnancy for
one. And I know our pregnancy rate is down somewhat, but not very much.
And at least \-- and, again, in Latino populations, it is very high and
continues to be very high in many states.

So it is that casual treatment. Again, I wish we had a doctor here
because they could talk about it is not a good health risk for young
girls to be having babies or \-- and that is just one aspect of it.
There are the diseases. And I don\'t want to get into that.

So my concern is not that it shouldn\'t be on, but the casual treatment.
And, again, I know there is not a lot of empirical evidence. But I
wanted to know if you have any concerns about that.

MS. STROSSEN: I would just have to say \-- to echo what Bob Corn-Revere
said earlier about violence about this being such a matter of values and
so subjective. That has got to be even more true when it comes to sex.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Dr. Cantor.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: One more comment and we will have to close up.

DR. CANTOR: In response to what both of you have just said, you gave a
lot of examples of different ways that violence might be depicted. And
it is \-- you are saying it is too simplified just to say this is
violence and it is bad. And we are talking here about how sex might be
depicted or talked about that might either be casual or really
unhelpful.

And what I want to say before this is over is what the D stands for in
the rating system. A lot of people don\'t know. The D stands for sexual
dialogue and innuendo. And this would be \-- it would be very valuable
if people knew what that meant and also could depend on the V.

And as a parent, what that says to me is there is this type of content
there. I ought to look at it to see if it is going to be the kind of
uplifting, helpful discussion of these two issues or something that I
want to at least give the opposite side of the question to my child
after he has seen it.

So pointing these things out is a good way not to say this is
automatically bad for your child, but there is a kind of content here
that could be tricky and you ought to look at it more carefully and then
decide whether this is exactly the message your child wants to want or
if you want to make a counter-message.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: If you could just indulge me with a closing comment
based on what you just said. There has been a lot of discussion today
about the role of the industry voluntarily educating parents and
empowering parents and what not. And, of course, your message talked a
lot about the responsibility, the personal corporate responsibility of
broadcast executives who make these decisions about what goes out on the
air.

And the three years that I have been in this job, I have had a number of
conversations with those people, the executives who create this
programming and put it on the air. And I have asked many of them point
blank why do you do this, why do you put this programming on the air
when you know it is not good for a lot of kids and while you probably
wouldn\'t want your own kids to watch it.

And many of them have been quite candid with me in talking about the
increasing competitive pressures that the broadcast industry is under
these days. It is not a simple world anymore where you have three
over-the-air networks and you are basically guaranteed a certain share
of the prime time audience. It is much more competitive.

And I don\'t think that we can rely on the corporate responsibility of
broadcasters to always do the right thing. First of all, there is a lot
more of them out there now making these decisions and putting
programming on the air. And it is just not \-- it is not just
broadcasting either. It is they are feeling the pressure from cable and
DVS and now the Internet.

So I want to come back to the V-chip. Vicky, you said that it is an
orphan technology. Why is that? I remember when V-chip legislation was
being advocated on Capitol Hill in the 1996 Act. And, frankly, there was
a lot of resistance from the broadcast industry. I notice a lot of
representatives from broadcast industry are here today.

And I wanted to send this message to you all because in the wake of the
recent hearings in the Senate commerce committee after the FTC report on
violence, a lot of broadcast executives said the first time I have ever
heard them say this, well, we have the V-chip. We can use the V-chip. We
here all endorse the V-chip. Joanne Cantor talked about PSAs and
seatbelts. If you can embrace seatbelts as a PSA campaign, why not the
V-chip?

Commissioner Tristani has done valiant work to try to get the broadcast
industry more focused on an education campaign for the V-chip. And I
think the industry could do a lot more in this regard. Why not
incorporate the V-chip in some of your entertainment programming as you
had the example used with \"ER\" and sex education? Why not incorporate
in some of your entertainment programming and get the word out.

Commissioner Powell talked about EPGs as far as the next evolution of
the way people use television. Well, how are we going to incorporate
V-chip-like technology into the EPGs and will this industry, the
broadcast industry, really embrace that technology to empower parents to
screen out some of the stuff that we don\'t want our kids to hear. Well,
thank you for indulging me that final comment before lunch. Let\'s
reconvene again at 2:15.

(Whereupon at 1:15 p.m., the hearing was recessed to reconvene at 2:20
p.m., this same day.)

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: I believe we are ready to get started. Welcome to the
third and final panel on today\'s hearings on the public interest
obligations of television licensees. Before we begin our third panel, I
wanted to mention that I just received testimony submitted in the record
in this proceeding from Senator Sam Brownbeck who has been very
interested in the issues that we have been discussing today. I wanted to
note that it will be entered into the record, of course, and to thank
the Senator for his participation in our hearing and on these issues in
general.

We are ready to proceed with the third panel which will address in a
fairly general fashion the way that digital technology can be used to
better serve our communities. And for those of those panelists who were
not here earlier today, just to go over the ground rules here.

We will ask each panelist to take five minutes to make an initial
opening statement. There are \-- there is a \-- there are lights here.
The green light will go on for four minutes. The yellow light will tell
you that there is a minute left. And then when the red light goes on,
your time is up.

We will also try to reserve some time at the end of the panel for
discussion among the Commissioners and the panelists. And also, I have
been trying to get some time for questions from the general public. But
we have not done too well on that. So we will try yet again for the
third panel. So thank you all for being here. And we will begin with our
first panelist, the esteemed Henry Geller.

MR. GELLER: I like the adjective. Thank you for this opportunity to
address this \-- the Commission on this problem. What I would like to
focus on is what I believe to be the best resolution of the broadcast
regulatory matter in the digital era. I am going to do that even though
at the end, I am recommending a legislative action by you rather than an
administrative action.

Your present regulatory scheme is a public trustee one. You are all
familiar with it, very familiar that system short-term licensees that
are committed to serving the public interest of being a fiduciary
trustee for their community. The Supreme Court in [Red Lion]{.underline}
said that it is based on many more people than are broadcast in our
available frequency. The government could have divided up the broadcast
day, week, month, whatever. And instead of that, it puts one entity on.
And he has to be a fiduciary for all those the government is keeping
off.

That \-- the constitutionality was sustained in [Red Lion]{.underline}.
And in the cases in the \'90s like [Turner]{.underline},
[Run]{.underline} and others, the Supreme Court again said that this
constitutes our broadcasters\' prudence. Even though it had been much
criticized forming the exception, this is what we are following.

Now, very quickly, I don\'t think there is much use in the FCC
discussing the validity of the public trustee scheme. You can\'t change
or declare it unconstitutional. Only a Court, the Supreme Court can. And
there doesn\'t seem to be very much use in your discussing whether you
are going to follow the public trustee scheme. You have to follow what
Congress has told you to do.

And in the 1996 Act, it said that remains the governing standard. But
you are the expert agency. And you can make legislative recommendation.
And what I would urge you to do is to tell Congress it is time to scrap
the public trustee scheme. And you would then treat broadcasting the way
you treat cable. Cable pays up to five percent of its gross revenues for
use of the public streets. And here, you would take some modest spectrum
fee, two, three, whatever percent. You would take it and you would give
it to public broadcasting.

There is still a need for high quality, public service programming. The
\-- as you heard in this morning\'s panel, the public broadcast system
is dedicated to doing just that. The commercial system, some do, some
don\'t. But it is under fierce competitive pressure and it is growing.
And, again, you heard that this morning.

By proceeding in this fashion, by doing this, you would take
broadcasting and level the playing field. It would be the same as the
other new electronic media like cable. And you would also remove First
Amendment strains. And finally, you would be giving up behavior content
regulation which is very difficult in this First Amendment field,
particularly at the margins. And in place of that, you would be adopting
a structure that works for what you want which is this high quality
public service programming.

And what I recommend is that your legislated program would focus on a
very easy step I think, a modest step for Congress to begin with. And
that is in your children\'s television field that was the concern of
this first panel. It is a crucial field because child by child, we do
grow our nation.

And if you look at what is happening in the digital era, you can have
multi-channel broadcasting. You could have one channel that does
pre-school, school-aged, adult literacy, teacher training. The public
system is eager to do that, has plans to do it. It just need adequate
funding. It does take a considerable amount of money.

The commercial system is never going to do that. And you shouldn\'t
expect it to do that. And so what I would propose is relieve the
broadcasters of their obligation in 303(B) to put on \-- to serve the
education needs of children including the Kolb requirement. And in place
of that, take one percent of the gross revenues of the local station.
That would give you 250 million dollars. And I believe that with that,
the public interest would greatly be promoted.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: That is your summation.

MR. GELLER: My time is up.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. Thank you. We will get back to that, I\'m sure,
Henry. Mr. LaCamera.

MR. LaCAMERA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Paul LaCamera and I am
the General Manager of WCVB TV which is the ABC affiliate in Boston,
part of the national Hearst Argile Television Group. Thank you for this
opportunity to appear on behalf of our studio and on behalf of Hearst
Argile Television and what is certainly a bit of a stretch, on behalf of
the local television broadcasters represented by the National
Association of Broadcasters.

I imagine that NAB asked me to represent its constituency because WCVB
is somewhat representative of the tradition and imperative of localism
and local television service in America. WCVB is a very successful
television station by most traditional measures. It is also a station
which deeply believes in the concept of localism and whose hallmark has
always been ambitious local service.

WCVB is also a station of firsts. And I would cite but two examples
which I know are of great interest and import to this body. On the
technology front, WCVB in October 1998 was the first station in New
England and one of the first in the nation to launch digital
broadcasting. We have taken this transition quite seriously and have had
some initial, although understandably limited successes.

On the content side, for the purpose of today\'s discussion on the local
service side, WCVB was the first station in the country to commit to the
airing of the minimum of five minutes nightly of so-called candidate
center discourse in the 30 days leading up to an election. We
specifically undertook this over the 30 days of January, prior to the
February 1st New Hampshire presidential primary.

WCVB\'s experiment was widely monitored and broadly documented. Without
straying into too many specifics, suffice it to say that it was an
exhilarating, rewarding and at the same time, an enormously frustrating
experience for us. However, it felt like the right thing to do. And in
the end, it proved to be such.

In fact, it was so successful, WCVB is currently in the midst of a
similar commitment in these 30 days leading up to the November 7th
election. Our station\'s parent group, Hearst Argile Television, has
extended this pledge to each of its 24 stations as part of its larger
Commitment 2000 Project which has as its goal the enhancement of public
participation in the electoral process.

And as we know, the WCVB and Hearst Argile models are now being
replicated across the local television industry including the important
CBS and NBC-owned station groups. And many other stations across the
country are devoting time in a variety of ways and formats to coverage
of the issues of the campaign.

As we learned, the five-minute concept tests more than a station\'s
commitment. It challenges its creativity, as well. In New Hampshire, we
face the obstacle of the lack of accessibility and the lack of
cooperation of two of the four principle candidates.

This current political season in Massachusetts, we tested by the absence
of a single meaningful race beyond the presidential contest. And even
attaching the descriptive contest to the presidential race in
Massachusetts is a bit of a stretch. Our senior Senator was up for
re-election, along, of course, with all of our ten Congressional
Representatives. Most do not have challengers and the few that do are
facing extreme fringe candidates at best.

However, we are doing our best to register citizens of Massachusetts,
encourage them to vote on November 7th even in the absence of contested
local races and to inform them as best we can of the issues at hand. It
is interesting to add that not a single political advertisement has
appeared this fall on a Boston television station.

And I would suggest this has not necessarily been idea for Massachusetts
voters. Voters were advertising as part of the mix a key player in the
rigger of the contest and of the debate. Last Wednesday, in fact, the
Boston Globe editorial described a situation in Massachusetts in a
sense, that George Bush and Al Gore are running for the presidency of
some foreign country.

The perception is not far from the truth in spite of the best efforts of
Boston television and of the Boston press to bring the candidates and
the campaign to the forefront of public attention.

The first Presidential debate did occur in our city. And the Boston
television stations did a superb job in framing this historic event,
particularly with special programs that aired in prime time prior to the
9:00 p.m. start of the debate. WCVB\'s next special undertaking is a
commercial-free, half hour debate at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, October 30th
when our Governor and our State President of Massachusetts will debate
in our studio a referendum question on the November 7th ballot which
would lower the state tax rate from 5.9 to five percent.

While Massachusetts may not have a need for a political race, it does
have some of the most critical referenda issues our state\'s voters have
ever been asked to consider. These are the issues in the political arena
being replicated throughout the Hearst Argile Group and across every
market and local television station in America, some in more vicious
ways than others.

Importantly, the undertakings I have described are not an anomaly and
certainly not unique to WCVB, to Boston or to Hearst Argile. In these
election outreach activities are but one small albeit current example of
the broader way of public service provided by local television stations
in America. I know that the NAB has tried to document and quantify these
efforts and actually derived a stunning figure of more than eight
billion dollars annually in public service.

With that figure so large that it almost loses its meaning, I can assure
you that the public work of our station and of our group and that of
every local television station in this country has great meaning. I am
always struck by and proud of the public service announcements, national
telethons, community projects, fund-raisers of every stripe, disaster
relief efforts and almost indescribable variety and volume of pro bono
work conducted by local stations.

I have always operated WCVB with the assumption that our station is a
community institution in the best sense of that term and with all the
attendant obligations. I also firmly believe that a great majority of my
counterparts believe this, as well, and operate their respective
stations with a high sense by dealings in community purpose. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much. Jim Goodman, thank you for being
here. I don\'t know where Professor Raskin is. So we will just go ahead
with your statement.

MR. GOODMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Three things. 1) Thank you for the
digital spectrum and thank you for this digital transition. It is great
technology and it will really make us better local broadcasters. Now, I
am \-- having said that, I have a couple of things on my mind.

One is we need some help to get this transition going. And the second
part is preserving the concept of localism. The reason we have 1,600
television stations is they are to serve the local community. How do we
preserve this concept of localism as we move off into the digital
beyond? So we need some help in getting this transition done. And how do
we preserve localism?

I am sure that you have read the Gore Commission report. I read it again
this weekend and decided we did a whole lot better than I thought we did
when we finished. But the concept \-- I commend that to you because the
concept out of the Gore Commission is that there should be 1) \-- we are
talking about public interest standards now for digital broadcasters in
the future.

There should be 1) a voluntary code. We need to get back to the
voluntary code. That is a very important part of it. And 2) there should
be minimum public interest standards for broadcasters. I mean, that is
in the statute. That is part of the law. And there should be minimum
public interest standards for broadcasters.

We \-- there were some suggested standards in the Gore Commission
report. Some were in the body of the report. The actual committee that I
worked on, the Minimum Public Standards, didn\'t make the main report.
It is sort of an appendix to it. But I wish you would really look at
that.

The idea behind that is localism, that every station should be required
to do local public affairs programming, local public service
announcements to have and ascertain a process and when it gets feedback
from the community in terms of what it should do and, very importantly
\-- and this is in the Gore Commission report and I hope you will look
at it \-- there is a really good quarterly report.

The truth is we don\'t really know how everybody is doing with \-- I
mean, there is \-- there are many fine broadcasters. As a matter of
fact, I think most broadcasters are fine. I am talking about the future.
The truth is there is no way to know what broadcasters are doing under
the current reporting system. And there is a very good quarterly report
in the Gore Commission that I hope you all will look at.

So report to the community, ascertainment and then do local public
affairs programming and local public service announcements. We did add
to that the window before the elections, 30 days before the elections,
since the stations are required to do local public service announcements
and local public affairs programming, that some of that time be turned
over to candidates in the window before the election.

I mean, a very minimal \-- I think we mentioned a couple of hours a week
of local public affairs programming, a certain number of PSAs. The basis
there really is local programming. Close captioning is going to be great
in digital. We can do a whole lot of things. Let me just mention three
other things to wrap it up here.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Jim, why are you so excited about digital?

MR. GOODMAN: We went on the air in \'96. We have broadcasted high
definition since then. We have done multi-casting. We have done
data-casting. We would be interested, Mr. Chairman, to know that on our
Fox digital station, we carried both the Fox network and the debate,
same station at the same time. That is not what you wanted, but it is
closing in on it.

In terms of multi-casting, we do regular programming. We also do news
about floods in eastern North Carolina. We broadcast data, IP data to
computers about closings according to the floods. This \-- we can do \--
imagination is the only limitation with this digital spectrum. We need
to get this transition going. You know, we must carry the digital tuner.
There should be a requirement that all stations do some HD.

We\'ve got to move this transition along, but we can be much better
local broadcasters. And I really believe that we should have minimal
public interest standards that relate to localism which is the reason we
are here, which is to serve the local community.

The only problem I had \-- we had \-- CBS \-- I\'ve got a yellow light.
CBS was doing four basketball games, the opening round of the March
Madness. One of the games was a Duke game. I said that is the only game
we need to take. It is the only important game. We took all four. So I
lost out of that one. But we carried four games at one time in March
Madness.

So we can do anything. This is great for broadcasting and great for
localism. And we tried to laid this out so this \-- we are not telling
people what to do, what to program, what the content is we should \--
but we are serving it should be at the local area.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much. And thank you for your
participation on the Gore Commission. We really appreciate that. Mr.
Taylor.

MR. TAYLOR: Thank you. My name is Paul Taylor. I am the Executive
Director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns. It is a nonprofit group
that has been encouraging broadcasters to provide more area time for
viewers to seeing their candidates discuss issues in the closing weeks
of the campaign season.

Thank you to the whole Commission for holding this very important
hearing. And in particular, I wanted to thank Commissioner Tristani and
Chairman Kennard, both of whom, Commissioner Tristani at an event we had
in June and Chairman Kennard last week up in New York, what I thought
were very eloquent comments on this subject.

You don\'t have to delve too deeply, Mr. Chairman, into your remarks to
see you are a little bit frustrated with the broadcast industry in the
area of meeting its public interest obligations. I share that
frustration. And let me explain why.

Our group has spent the better part of the last year, year and a half
encouraging the broadcast industry to respond to the recommendation of
the so-called Gore Commission on which both Paul LaCamera and Jim
Goodman so ably served in the area of candidate-centered discourse.

And I just want to just go briefly back over the history here. This
recommendation, five minutes a night, a voluntary standard, five minutes
a night, 30 nights out from the night of the election, was an effort to
break a long-standing impasse on the difficult issue of free air time
for candidates. It was crafted by broadcasters and public interest
advocates alike. And it represented a good faith compromise between
those who support mandates and those who oppose them.

And it was also kind of a challenge to the industry. It said, look, here
is a voluntary standard which you yourself helped craft. It has got lots
of flexibility built into it. It has got a minimalist target, five
minutes a night. Let\'s see what you can do with it.

Well, we are now most of the way through the first general election that
has been held since the standard was put on table. And the record has
not been very good. During the primary season with a few notable
exceptions \-- and Paul LaCamera described the best of them I believe
and Jim Goodman\'s station also had an excellent record during the
primaries.

But by and large, the industry ignored this proposal. We work with
researchers from the University of Southern California and the
University of Pennsylvania. They found that the typical local station
devoted just 39 seconds as night to candidate discourse in the month
preceding their relevant primary. And the national networks devoted 36
seconds a night in the month preceding the Super Tuesday Primary which
was close to kind of a national election.

Now we are in the 30-day window preceding November 7th. And we find that
out of the roughly 1,300 local commercial stations in the country, by
our count, 93 of them or about seven percent of the industry has
indicated that they will even try to meet that standard this fall. Most
of these are local stations owned by the half dozen or so station groups
that have committed at the corporate level, CBS, NBC, Script, Hearst
Argile and Capital.

I commend them for taking this step. But I can\'t help but wonder where
is the other 93 percent. It is not only that they haven\'t taken up this
challenge. They have, in fact, been cutting back on election coverage
and coverage particularly at issue across a variety of fronts. The
coverage of the Presidential race, for example, by the network nightly
news is down by one-third from 1988, the last time we had an open seat
Presidential campaign despite the fact this by most accounting is the
most competitive Presidential race we have seen in a generation.

There were 22 televised debates during \-- that were held during the
primary season this year, 22. Of those, only two aired on a broadcast
network, neither of those two in prime time. Just two weeks ago for the
first time in our history, two of our four major national networks chose
not to broadcast live a general election Presidential debate.

And in addition, the opening nights of the 30-night window occurred last
Monday and Tuesday. And we took a look at the network-affiliated local
stations in the five largest cities in the country, New York, L.A.,
Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

We found on the first two nights of the window, the first two week
nights of the window that these top 15 stations, the NBC, CBS and ABC
stations in those five cities, aired on average just 45 seconds a night
of candidate discourse. This despite the fact that of those 15 stations,
nine of them are owned by NBC and CBS which have made this commitment at
the corporate level.

So what we are really seeing based on these early returns \-- I hesitate
to make too much of this because it is just an opening few nights, but
based on the early returns what we are seeing here in terms of the
response to the voluntary standard is not much intake by the vast
majority of the industry and little beyond lip service with a few
notable exceptions \-- and most of them, in fact, are sitting to my left
\-- from the rest.

I believe given this very unfortunate response to their promising
proposal, I think it is time to push for a mandate. I agree with
Chairman Kennard that such a mandate \-- the first place to look for
such a mandate is Congress. And ideally, it would be part of their
broader campaign finance legislation.

But I would go a step further because there is a long and unhappy
history of this issue in Congress. And the bottom line is that the
interest of incumbent members of Congress and the interest of incumbent
broadcasters are for this not to happen.

So I think that both of them want to preserve a status quo that protects
incumbents, starves challengers, enriches broadcasters and impoverishes
our democracy. It is a status quo where if you want to communicate to
the voters on broadcast television, you have to pay your way on.

Let me just close by urging the FCC regardless of whatever Congress does
or doesn\'t do in this area, to move towards considering a free air-time
mandate. Here at the FCC, make it a part of the condition of a
broadcaster receiving a license. I believe it is constitutional. We and
20 other groups submitted in response to your public inquiry notice an
argument that it is constitutional. I believe it is within your
authority to do so. And I would urge you to move forward with all
deliberate speed. Thank you much.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Taylor. Sister Mary Parks.

SISTER PARKS: Good afternoon. My name is Mary Parks. I am a Sister of
St. Joseph, committed to the Communications Ministry in Central
Pennsylvania in the Diocese of Allentown and Johnstown for the Catholic
Church. Our diocese is about 115,000 Catholics in eight counties in west
central Pennsylvania.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today because I
believe that under the current regulatory structure, free access to the
public airwaves does not really exist anymore. And that concerns me a
great deal.

I would like to begin my story today by telling you a little bit about
my beginning in television. My first job after I graduated from college
in 1973 was teaching Romper Room which was a children\'s television
program in those days. And anybody over 30 might remember. Every morning
for two years, I taught as a live on-air personality on WJAC TV in
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. And many area youngsters had the opportunity to
be part of that program on TV. We graduated a class every two weeks.

The program was syndicated on paper so that it could be localized all
over the country. And during those years from 1974 to 1975, my station
did a tremendous amount of public service programming and free public
service announcements. After teaching English for a few years, I
returned to television in 1978 at the same station in Johnstown, 30
miles from where I grew up as a beep announcer, as a program host for
public service programs, as a weather host.

Every week day, WJAC TV gave \-- and this is every week day \-- 15
minutes of public service programming time to worthwhile community
interests right after our main news. People could see area religious
leaders on \"Religion Today.\" Alma Kramer hosted \"Seniors Today\",
with a variety of interesting topics for older people in our community.
We had a program for farmers, by farmers, called \"Extension Six.\" I
learned a lot, believe me.

And during prime time once a week during the school year, we ran a half
hour program called scholastic quiz which allowed area high schools to
send their best and their brightest to compete academically, answering
questions on every subject from history to science to math. But the most
coverage television provides for education is the expanded sports
reporting we get on high school football during the 11:00 p.m. Friday
news shows.

Under the stipulations of our union contract in those days, a large
portion of our station identifications and commercials were read live.
And because of that, I was more aware than I would ordinarily have been
about the number of public service announcements we did because I was
reading quite a few of them during every shift.

And when Sears was slow at the television station and paid commercials
were few, we did tons of PSAs. Today, news stations fill those available
time slots with commercial material. They type their local news
incessantly. Some of the promotions are general in nature. Others are
specific to news programs of the day.

And when we used to do commercial updates in our news during the 1980s
\-- I read ten years of news, too. But those updates were news
reporting. We were telling people the news, not just teasing what we
were going to tell them later. Now stations never give the whole story
during those updates. They just entice viewers. And clearly, the
industry deems this promotional barrage an imperative as stations are
battling for the Laurel Ives in these rating wars.

During the 1980s when I worked exclusively in the news department at
WJAC, I could see the changes happening. In my opinion, we were doing
more promotional and less reporting as the decade went on. My decade in
news ended when I entered my religious community in 1990. But during the
ten years that I was reporting news, I watched free programming
disappear at our station. And now I am in the position to understand
more fully what that means.

I became the Secretary for Communications to the Bishop Joseph in 1998.
And I am back in my old stomping grounds where people remember me from
my days on television. I have many friends that still work on local
television stations. And I enjoy my relations with them.

And in spite of having a strong home field advantage, I am unable to get
any of our public service announcements on the air free. I have been
told that other than slots in the middle of the night, free time no
longer exists. Maybe some groups are still getting PSAs. But I cannot
say that I have personally seen any of them on the four network
affiliates in our market.

And we ended up having to buy time for the first time in history at the
diocese to get our jubilee and conciliation spots on the air. We spent
\$6,000.00 after my Communications Advisory Committee recommended that
it was better to do that than not have them there at all.

Things aren\'t any better on the radio front. And for the first time
this past year, we had to buy time on the radio, too. And we spent
\$2,000.00 doing that. I really am reluctant about that though because I
believe this is air time which should be given to the community. And it
no longer exists.

I don\'t have time to tell you the whole story. But suffice it to say
that I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak with you about this
today.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much, Sister. Mr. Paul Schroeder.

MR. SCHROEDER: Hi, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity. My name
is Paul Schroeder. I am Vice President of the American Foundation for
the Blind for Governmental Relations and President of the Alliance for
Public Technology.

I want to first commend your in particular, Mr. Chairman, and your
colleagues for your bold action last July in approving a report and
order on video description. That action which I think took some real
courage and certainly a great deal of effort is going to bring
television much closer to millions of Americans who are blind or
visually impaired who have been missing out for good or evil, I admit
listening to today\'s discussion, on the benefits of television
programming.

I also want to commend you for the closed captioning rule on digital TV
receivers. It, of course, continues the fine record of work in that area
that has been built by this Commission.

I have a couple of points that I would like to add that I think we have
an opportunity in the digital television proceeding to build on that
record. I also want to add some points of a third area regarding access
to ancillary services that are likely to come about in the digital
television environment.

One of the biggest challenges in the video description area, as you may
remember from putting that report and order together, is the limited
space on which video descriptions can currently be broadcast. These are
audio descriptions or narrative tracts that are added to ta television
program that give a blind or visually impaired viewer information about
what is happening in the visual elements of that program.

In the analog standard, of course, the only way to deliver those is
under something called the secondary audio program channel. The beauty
of the digital television space, of course, is there is lots of spectrum
available and there are lots of audio channels available on that
spectrum. We think the time is right now to ensure that part of that
spectrum is reserved for video description.

I know that the Commission is holding off on requiring video description
in the digital television market for the moment. I suspect that the
experience that we will all have under the report and order you have
already put forth will tell us that this is a good idea and you will, in
fact, want to move it into the digital environment.

Let\'s make sure that the band width is available to do that now so that
we are not going to have to try to force video description into the
marketplace of competition for that audio channel space which, as you
can imagine, is going to fill up quite quickly, I have no doubt.

Two other areas in video description that I think need attention. Part
of the problem, also, of the secondary audio program channel is the fact
that either many receivers either don\'t get it or it is difficult for a
blind viewer to enact that button.

We need to make sure that that gets rectified in the digital environment
to ensure that \-- first of all, that digital receivers receiving
equipment can decode the audio tracts for video description and mix
those with the main audio program and, secondly, that the receivers are
easy to use and that the \-- at least the video description component of
that technology is, in fact, easy to access by a person who is blind or
visually impaired. But, obviously, it goes without saying, we will ask
the Commission to phase in video description into the digital television
environment.

In the closed captioning area, I think there are some provisions that
need to be addressed and affirmed. In the first place, it would be
important to affirm that multicast programs which are available in DTV,
all of those programs, of course, should be closed captioned.

Secondly, it would be important to look at the investments that are now
being made to build up toward digital television. It seems also an
appropriate time to invest in real-time captioning so that, in fact, we
can bring news and emergency information to individuals who are deaf or
hard of hearing in a real-time way.

Last, of course, if there is going to be public interest requirements
for locally produced programming, that programming should be made
available via closed captions. There are some provisions in the current
rule which could cause trouble in this area with exemptions. Also, if
there is going to be requirements for political programming and
political candidates information, that information should also,
obviously, be closed captioned. There are some exemptions that could
affect that.

In the area of ancillary services, we have a history of inaccessible
communications technologies that face people with disabilities. And you
all have been doing a great deal of work to try to address those
retrospectively. Why not do that now at the beginning, at the dawn of
this age? Electronic program guides, education-enhanced information, all
of these services that will be available need to be made accessible.

Last, I would say that DTV and the internet will draw closer together.
There is no question. And I think the Commission needs to look at how to
make the internet-based services that are going to be an important
component of the digital television environment accessible to people
with disabilities.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much, Paul. We appreciate your
testimony. I want to go back to the testimony of Henry Geller which I
always love hearing Henry Geller speak. In fact, as I was listening to
you, I was harkening back to the first time I heard you speak when I was
a second-year law student at Yale and you were a guest lecturer. And I
will never forget that you not only rattled off the case names of many
cases that I now know about, but also gave the pinpoint cites. I notice
that you have gotten out of that practice, Henry. I really kind of miss
it. But \--

MR. GELLER: It doesn\'t get you anywhere.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: But I\'m always intrigued by your notion that we
should replace the public trustee concept, in effect, with a spectrum
fee. But one of the things that has always troubled me about it is that
we still do live in a world where most people get their news and
information from television. And most people still rely on their local
broadcast stations or networks \-- locally affiliated networks to get
the information.

And so what is the \-- there are some significant trade-offs there that
I am sure that you have thought about. If you are suggesting that we in
effect scrap the public trustee model and take \-- convert this into a
spectrum fee, what do you tell the people who are still going to rely on
commercial television, that your model won\'t work and it is always
counter to marketing incentives so are we just going to give up?

MR. GELLER: It isn\'t trade off. But the two areas I think of the
greatest importance, one is children\'s television programming. I have
covered that already. And I think you would be better off in relying on
the commercial one. I recognize the contribution made by very good
broadcasters such as sitting at this table. But the fact is on children
you would \-- I think would be far ahead of it if instead of starving
public broadcasting and reduce starve with a dollar per capita, whereas
Canada is \$32.00 and Great Britain is \$38.00. There we will gain.

When you get to the other area you mention, it is the area of informing
people, of informing them about news, about emergencies, about all kinds
of things. And I would urge to you that the broadcaster would continue
to do what he does now even if you de-regulate him.

They provide news because it is essential to them. It is a lead-in to
the evening television. It is a money-maker for them. They are not going
to abandon news. You have no requirement on news. You have a requirement
for issue-oriented programming. You never said how much. But you are
getting tons of news.

If the FCC disappeared tomorrow, they would not affect in any way what
is going on except in the children\'s area, the three-hour requirement,
some ownership rules. But there what the broadcaster is doing, those who
are very good, have deep roots in their community and you help defile
what they are doing. But the other ones are doing very little and
nothing is happening to them.

You don\'t have any notion of what is going on because you get a post
card except in the children\'s area. And what I am saying to you is I
think even far ahead in the area of informing the electorate, if you
de-regulated and as part of campaign reform done by Congress, not by the
Commission, you cannot do campaign finance reform. It is very complex,
all kinds of detail.

But if it were done by them so that they were full-time, you would get
two enormous contributions to the public interest, in education and in
the political broadcasting. You would be contributing to and educated
and informed electorate. And I think that there is much international
interest to do that and move ahead.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Well, Henry, short of Congressional action in this
area, what do you suggest that we do?

MR. GELLER: I \-- you can\'t do it. It has to be Congressional action.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Well, I understand that. But if our Congress does not
act \--

MR. GELLER: Well, I wouldn\'t give it that. But all I am saying to you
is no agency except one rule kick-back in 1978 has ever urged us in the
government. That was me.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Welcome back.

MR. GELLER: But what I would think is though that you ought to \-- if
you had recommended it, it would have carried greater weight from that
one schmuck back then. I recommend that you look at it and put it before
you for study and my discussion. If you don\'t do it, then I think you
are back to what Jim Goodman has told you already here. We are operating
with the present system.

You don\'t know how much money-chaining there will be. And you don\'t
know what is going to happen in ancillary. You have to make guesses. But
even under the present system, what has to be emphasized is localism.
Not how do you reform people on national issues. There is so much out
there that goes on now. I think it is localism.

And you said it well. And I think, therefore, there ought to be some
minimum standard. I hate to be going back over the past. But it is the
future if Congress doesn\'t act, also. At that point, you need a minimum
standard.

You have a renewal staff. When the renewals come in, what are they to do
if somebody has one percent informational area locally? Do they claim?
Do they deny? Two percent, three? I think that the broadcasters are
entitled to know what the safe haven is for minimal and so is the public
and so is your renewal staff.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you, Henry. Professor Raskin has arrived. And is
the traffic pretty bad out there?

PROFESSOR RASKIN: Forgive me, Mr. Chairman. I\'ve got a million excuses
for being late.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Well, we don\'t want to hear those. Why don\'t you
just go right into your testimony. We\'ll just take five minutes.

PROFESSOR RASKIN: Sure. I\'ll just pick up on the last dialogue. From
the broadest theoretical perspective, it is obviously important to
distinguish what the market provides to consumers and then what the
market provides to citizens. And there is no doubt that the market
arguably works for providing consumers what they want.

But it certainly doesn\'t work for providing citizens with what they
need in order to be effective participants and members of the democratic
community which in the American Constitutional regime requires
participation at different levels, at the local level, at the state
level and the national level.

I would agree with the proposition that we have a lot of information
about what is going on at the national level, but much less in terms of
what is taking place at the state and local level. And there I think it
becomes important in order to preserve community involvement and
participation to have a meaningful requirement of some minimal coverage
of local news and local activities and opportunities for local
involvement and participation.

Then I think that some thought should be given to and some emphasis
should be given to requirements of \-- or at least hortatory
requirements or advisory requirements about the importance of public
debate. And we are witnessing from the Presidential debates how
televised public discussion can mobilize and catalyze public involvement
and public participation. And the same thing can take place at the state
and local level.

I would favor requirements and regulatory guidelines that would
emphasize the maximum possible participation of different views rather
than the artificial constriction and manipulation of electoral contest
to see that only certain views be represented. And that would be I would
think within the public interest mandate of the FCC.

But generally, you know, I think that we are moving into an area where
entertainment could very much marginalize and sideline public debate,
discourse and communication and discussion at the local and state level.
And at the FCC, at least until Congress acts in the way you suggested,
really should be in the forefront of trying to push the broadcasters to
play that public interest role.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much. Mr. Taylor, you have been a very
effective advocate on this political discourse issue for some time now.
And oftentimes when we hear this issue discussed, in fact, when I have
advocated it myself, I often encounter a barrage of questions: Well, it
is too complicated and this can\'t really be implemented and the
political process is too complex with different jurisdictions, different
parties and what not.

I have read some of your proposals on this that are very elegant in
their simplicity and very workable. And I wondered if you could just
tell us for a moment how you think a free time requirement could work
and how it could be implemented with minimal complexity.

MR. TAYLOR: There are a couple of objectives we are trying to accomplish
with some free air-time regime. One of them is to reduce the cost of
politicals. The largest single driver of the run-away cost of politics
is the cost of air time. Another it seems to me is to better inform the
public. And in the spirit of the public interest obligation, I think
that is what we have appropriately focused on.

If you had \-- the difficulty \-- the complication is that there is a
big difference between a local broadcaster let us say in the city of New
York where you have 30 or so Congressional districts within your viewing
area and in the city of Boise or Albuquerque where you only have one. So
how do you do all of that and how do you keep a simple base for the
candidate and for the broadcaster and how do you serve the public?

One way to go might be some sort of voucher system. You create a
broadcast bank of time. Every station contributes to the bank on some
formula based on its gross revenue. And then vouchers are handed out to
qualifying candidate and perhaps to the political parties. And they
spend \-- this is like play money and you can only spend on a broadcast
station.

And if you want \-- if you, the candidate, want to advertise in New York
and pay ten or 20 or 30 times the rate that your fellow candidate may
pay for Albuquerque, that is your choice. And it will only go so far.
And you could do the same thing with political parties. That would tend
to level out the burdens on broadcasters. So that would be one way to
go.

Another way to go is the way that the Commission has gone with air time
for children\'s educational programming, is you create a broad
requirement, in the case of children\'s television programming, three
hours a week and adhere to broad guidelines. And it becomes a part of
your \-- to re-qualify for the license, you have to show us you have
done it.

It seems to me that this is the area that the five-minute a night
recommendation tends to push you in. And whether five minutes a night is
the right way to go or whether you want some other broader guideline \--
and this would be something that I think the FCC would want to look at.
But the notion is every time an election season comes around, there is
something on the ballot whether it is \-- and sometimes the most
important thing to the viewer may be the Senate race, may be the
governors race, may be a ballot initiative.

So you build a model that allows for all of the flexibility that any
common sense person would want, allows for people like Jim Goodman and
Paul LaCamera to make the journalistic and public interest judgement.
You hear the menu of races going on in our market this season. Here is
what we are going to focus on.

And the other thing I would raise is that with Jim Goodman and Paul
LaCamera, you really do have two models that are very different. I think
they both very much serve a public interest. But what Jim Goodman\'s
station has done with the air time under the five-minute a night
standard has been to say to candidates, in his case I think for governor
and lieutenant governor and other state-run offices, we are going to
give you two-minute slots and you can record what you want to say and we
are going to show them on some routine and your opponents and on and on
like this for the 30 nights preceding \-- the 30 days and nights
preceding the election.

Paul LaCamera has gone to a more journalistic model where he wanted to
invite candidates in. He had some frustration getting them all in. But
he wants a mix of interviews. He did some footage or whatever the
candidate was saying on the stump speech. He has his journalists framing
some of the issues.

My notion there in very much the spirit of the Gore Commission
recommendation is let 1,000 formats bloom. It is not perhaps for any one
body to dictate what is the best way to do it. And here I think the
values and virtues of localism would very much come into play.

But it does seem to me that the lesson of this past year, the very
disquieting lesson is if you just do it as a voluntary standard and rely
on the industry to use its journalistic and public interest instinct,
then unfortunately the Jim Goodmans and the Paul LaCameras of the world
will turn out to be very much the exception.

The rule is in industry that it is walking away from informing the
public because it has concluded from bottom-line interest the public
isn\'t that interested, it doesn\'t get good ratings.

And it has also concluded, quite frankly, that the air time that he
wants to be involved with when it comes to politics is the air time that
sells. It will sell a billion dollars worth of air time according to
Wall Street estimates, the television industry, this year. It will sell
more political spots than fast food spots.

And I think one of the reasons why we have lost some of our audience for
politics is the American public gets bombarded by the ads. And that is
the face of politics in the concluding weeks. And I think it turns out
to be a disincentive to participation.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Excellent. Thank you very much. And I would like to
invite my colleagues to ask questions at this time.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I have a question.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Gloria?

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I want to first of all thank every one of you for
being here today. And as I listened, Sister, I listened to you with
particular attention. And I was troubled by what I heard you relate.
Back, I don\'t know, 20 years ago, the broadcasters in your community
were doing certain things, serving the local communities. And it appears
now that they have given up on that for whatever reasons.

I was also very happy to hear that, Paul LaCamera and James Goodman, you
are really serving their communities. But I keep hearing you are the
exception and not the rule. And, Mr. Goodman, you pointed out, too,
there ought to be some minimal public interest obligation standards
aimed at localism, aimed at the station in whatever way, fulfilling
those local requirements.

You also said there ought to be some kind of ascertainment process.
Could you elaborate? Because it sounds like what you are proposing or
what you are believing could help Sister Parks\' community perhaps be
better served.

MR. GOODMAN: Well, the concept is there should be an ascertainment
process in which the station talks to the community and \-- to
understand issues and problems and talks to community groups and reports
on that \-- and reports on that process. I mean, it is part of the
quarterly report that we are talking about.

And then the station would be required \-- I know that is a bad word \--
but would be required to run \-- would be required to do a certain
amount of local public affairs programming. The station could decide on
the topic, who is on it, when it runs. We did suggest that some should
run in prime time.

And then the station would \-- the station would also be required to run
local public service announcements as part of this localism mandate. I
am trying to get in the middle of on my right is the founder of
greedy.com and on my left is probably the best station operator in the
country. And I am trying to say there certainly is a way to talk about
this.

If we have a code, that the industry really needs, and we have minimum
standards that require local \-- some local programming, then I think we
can take care of what everybody wants to do, public affairs. Part of our
public affairs programming could be turned over to political. And I did
\-- there are a couple of things I wanted to mention about that.

In our case, we are not giving people free commercial time. We are not
saying give us your commercial and we will run it. We are saying here is
two minutes and we want you to talk about \-- we pick some of the issues
and they \-- we say we want you to talk about the university bond issue.
The other thing we did that I thought was interesting was we said you
can\'t talk about the opposition.

This is not \-- this is what is your position on this issue. And I will
say, I was telling Paul, we have never had the positive \-- of anything
we have done, and we have done a bunch over the years, we have never had
as much positive comment as we have had from putting the candidates on
to talk about their positions on issues.

And that could be easily done if we have a public affairs requirement.
It just becomes part of the public affairs requirement 30 days before
the election. It would have to be a special time that we would set
aside.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Anybody else like to comment on that? Mr. Geller?

MR. GELLER: I just wanted to say that in October of 1993, the common
cause filed a petition that was along the lines of the second route that
Paul Taylor gave great discretion to the licensee. It was a five-minute
fix in prime time, but said that the licensee has complete discretion
what races he wants to choose or \-- I just think it is crazy to have
all the focus on the national one. That is covered so well.

There are a lot of local races that are important to the community. The
candidates don\'t have the money to get on television. But it would be
solely within the discretion of the licensee. If he wanted to do the
Presidential, he could add to that.

And I would recommend \-- it has been pending since October of 1993. And
I would recommend you look at it. It is very simple. And it sets out why
it is constitutional and why it is within the FCC\'s authority.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: What is the docket number, Henry?

MR. GELLER: It was filed by a witness at a meeting.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Mr. LaCamera?

MR. LaCAMERA: May I add something? Thank you. I would just like to
follow up on what Paul Taylor had to say about the five-minute concept.
And since we were the first ones to test it, there is a learning curve.
And I think we should be very encouraged by the number of stations and
station groups that have committed to it. Although as Paul reported,
some of them may be off to a small start.

And while we went into this with the best of intentions last January in
New Hampshire, we found that we had the full participation of Mr. Gore
and Mr. McCain and no participate from Mr. Bush or Mr. Bradley. And so
we had, again, the best of intentions.

And the five minutes was going to be the minimum, the threshold of what
we were to do each evening. On some evenings we fell short. And then
when Paul and we, ourselves, went back retrospectively and documented
what we did, we wound up averaging about four and a half minutes a
night.

So it\'s not \-- none of this is idealistic by any means. And the whole
concept of free political time, please understand that broadcasters
realize the role we are playing in political advertising and want to be
part of whatever comprehensive campaign reform occurs in the years
ahead. But for right now to come up with some sort of plan or system of
free political time, our experience is that that is best defined by 60
minutes, unfettered minutes on the Oprah Winfrey program.

Campaigns are enormously cynical and controlling about how they want to
appear, particularly on local television stations. And it adds great
complexity to it when it undermines whatever idealism there is in that
basic concept. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a question I
would particularly like to address to Mr. Goodman and Mr. LaCamera. Both
of you are with companies that have FCC licenses. There are hundreds of
thousands of FCC licenses, each of which has a public interest
obligation under the statute.

Suppose in some hypothetical world, the Commission were to tell all FCC
licensees that they have as part of their public interest obligation an
obligation to tell the communities in which they operate, whether it is
a small area or nationwide, to provide some information about political
campaigns.

Suppose every time I turned on a cell. phone, I heard the message,
\"Remember the date November 7th\", or, \"Remember to register to
vote.\" I randomly would receive a political message from one of the
political candidates. Suppose my Part 15 device would chirp the message,
\"Remember the date November 7th.\"

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: It sounds like a great idea to me.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: Suppose cable operators who have FCC
licenses had to provide five minutes a night of free air time. Suppose
your local telephone company that has 214 permits had to begin every
call with a message. Suppose the IICs that have 214 agreements had to do
this, as well. And you, as well, did.

Let\'s take a little twist to my little hypothetical. Let\'s suppose we
removed all the obligations of everybody except the broadcasters. We
told the cable operators, well, you don\'t have to. We told the
satellite carriers, well, you don\'t have to. Told the cell. phone
operators you don\'t have to. Told the industry users you don\'t have
to. And said only the broadcasters have to burden \-- have to bear the
burden of providing free political air time. How would you feel about
that?

MR. LaCAMERA: I suppose what you are doing is in some way arguing our
case. Jim and I come from an industry with a special distinguished
legacy of 15 years of public service which we take very seriously. Where
Jim and I differ is Jim as advocated, as you\'ve heard, a return to the
formalities of the past. I look upon this as a more contemporary
twenty-first century situation and still believe that we continue to
serve and should do that on a volunteer basis at our discretion and
hopefully with a sense of idealism that marks the operation of most
television stations.

So I don\'t particularly see the analogy. And I may be handicapped by I
think 30 years in the industry. Jim?

MR. GOODMAN: I think that would be fine. As a matter of fact, I think
that is the way it should be. I mean, I \-- we have local television
stations for a reason. And that is to provide news and information and
entertainment and programming to the local community. That is why we
have them. That is what we are supposed to do.

And I have no \-- I think, as Mr. Geller, said that the public deserves
to know what is expected of us. The public should be able to measure our
performance. It is a public license. And I think we deserve to know what
that is because I can follow the rules. It is pretty tough to say serve
the public interest if you don\'t know what that is. So I don\'t put \--
I guess I \--

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: Do you think that other licensees don\'t
have public interest obligations?

MR. GOODMAN: To provide news and public affairs and all \-- no. I mean,
I don\'t \-- no. The phone company, no. They don\'t have \-- no, I
don\'t. I mean, I\'m not \-- but I can\'t \-- that\'s \-- I am just
giving you my view as a broadcaster which is that we have local stations
for one reason. We would have huge stations that cover everything. But
we don\'t. We have stations in all these markets, especially doing local
programming. There should be a minimal requirement that we do a certain
amount of this.

I think this is key to maintaining local broadcasting in the future.
Now, I am trying \-- we are going to a new technology and we are in a
new century. But that doesn\'t mean the local community is not
important. That doesn\'t mean that sort of the base value of what
broadcasting is put together for shouldn\'t be there.

I have read everything you have written about this. And I am with you
\-- I am almost with you except it doesn\'t make any sense to me to put
together a local system of broadcasting, tell those broadcasters they
are supposed to serve the public interest and then not tell them what
that is or the public which really \-- she would like an \-- the Sister
would like an opportunity to know whether the local broadcasters in her
community are playing \-- doing what they are supposed to do. And I\'m
not \-- I don\'t \-- my lawyer told me not to argue with you.

(Laughter.)

And I am not going to do it. I am going to quit because you are going to
run me out of here.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: You are doing fine. Just keep on going.
You are doing fine.

MR. GOODMAN: No, I\'m not because I know what you are \-- I know \-- but
that\'s \-- I\'m \-- on the one hand, I believe we are the first to do
\-- by definition, we are the first to do all those things. We are going
to be high definition. There\'s the whole thing, January 1, five hours a
day, all high definition news.

You can\'t push \-- I\'m not going to say we are not leaders in
technology. But that doesn\'t mean that I don\'t think this value
business we\'ve got here about localism and local service is not
pertinent, it\'s not relevant. It is more relevant than it has ever been
because of all of the other channels. And so I\'m not \--

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you very much.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: I am not suggesting that it isn\'t. And I
am just \-- I am puzzled and, frankly, I am surprised that you all would
see that this is an obligation that you alone have to shoulder and the
rest of the world gets a free pass.

PROFESSOR RASKIN: Can I take a shot at this? It strikes me that the
answer has to do with the character of the medium and the nature of the
forum that has been created. It would be somewhat surprising to pick up
your cell. phone and have a recorded message saying, \"Don\'t forget to
vote. Don\'t forget to vote.\" But then again, the reason that we get
telephones and engage in telephone technology is so that we can call the
people that we want to talk to and they can call us.

So it goes back to the underlying purposes of having broadcast
television, broadcast radio. And I think if you go back to the original
statutory purposes, it was precisely to create a sense of public
community and discourse to be able to talk about public issues. And I
think, you know, as you eloquently pointed out, that role is every more
urgently needed by the public for broadcasters.

That is, it is not a diminishing obligation. It is one that grows in
importance as we become more of a nationalized market. In a certain
sense, the whole idea of a coherent local community depends upon local
broadcasters maintaining their determination to cover local news, to
have local community proceedings, counter proceedings, municipal
proceedings put on the air and to have the opportunities for people to
comment and discuss and debate them.

COMMISSIONER FURCHTGOTT-ROTH: Well, thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Commissioner Ness.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Yes. Continuing this debate a little bit, certainly
the satellite DBS providers have a four percent set-aside for public
interest programming, for educational programming. And the cable folks
have a five percent franchise fee typically in most jurisdictions, plus
they have set-aside pay channels for public education and governmental
use.

There is an E911 requirement. And the PCS providers have had to pay for
their spectrum fairly substantially in order to be able to provide the
service that they provide for the public. There is universal service
requirements on telephone companies including carrier of last resort
requirements where they have to string wires into the far reaches of
this country in order to be able to provide service.

There is hopefully minimum standards of service requirements for many of
these carriers, as well, to ensure that the messages do get through from
customer to customer. So each licensee has certain obligations that
exist essentially commenting on what you just said, Professor Raskin,
that it is commensurate with the type of service that they are providing
to the public.

Broadcast has an enormous value to this country. It has been \-- it has
provided an incredible service year after year after year, day after day
after day. One particularly focused on the local communities. And I have
known many, many broadcasters over the course of the last two decades
who have an extraordinary sense of commitment to the markets. A sense of
idealism still exists among many.

That having been said, I would like to pursue a little bit further what
Mr. Goodman has suggested. One of the notions that he thought would be
appropriate and the Gore Commission thought would be appropriate was
willing to ascertain to the process. And I was wondering if Mr. LaCamera
could comment on that concept.

It used to be there. It has kind of gone by the wayside. Was it useful?
Where did it go wrong? Is there something that, once again, broadcasters
can focus on in service of the local community.

MR. LaCAMERA: It became an exercise. And I will share an anecdote and a
very true one with you. Congressman Buddy Frank, who is a brilliant,
very colorful figure, the last time I interviewed him under the formal
ascertainment process. He conducted the interview and swung his chair
around with his back to me, and he said, \"This is an expression of my
protest against this exercise.\" And I think that is somewhat
representative of how many people felt about the process.

There is no doubt that it was always a learning experience. You always
learn something from everybody you talk to. But, again, any worthy
broadcaster \-- and you talked through morning and we have talked
through this afternoon\'s session, there is no doubt that some people
are operating at the minimum.

And that is indefensible. But I don\'t know whether you correct that.
And I don\'t believe we should correct that by a return to the past and
imposing procedures and regulations that really are very much outdated
in today\'s abundant media environment, an enormously changed and
different competitive environment.

I mean, at one time when Jim and I thrived probably in this business, we
were part of an oligopoly. There was ABC, CBS and NBC. And now it is so
enormously vastly different, particularly in a city like Boston which is
a heavily wired city. Cable penetration, as Commissioner Tristani
suggested this morning, is often a function of economics.

Boston is a very high end, prosperous, well educated city. The internet
usage is enormous. And it is really a good witness to tremendous erosion
of viewership in the marketplace. So it is very different today
operating a television station. But that is not to say, to embrace your
words, that the idealism and tradition, which has always been a guiding
principle of most television stations in this country, should be
abandoned.

And the issue is, and I believe that it is much more appropriate in
today\'s environment that that be one conducted on a voluntary basis, a
market basis.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Can I just ask, was that \-- because I don\'t
know that much about the ascertainment process. I came here three years
ago.

MR. LaCAMERA: Right.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: But was it always this kind of pointless exercise
for the air or \--

MR. LaCAMERA: No. Like I said, it was always a learning exercise. But
hopefully in today\'s increased informational age that people who are
running television stations and operating on the department letterhead
logo television stations have those ties and involvement and knowledge
of the community.

We set up a formal appointment, go out and meet an array \--
representative array of so-called community leaders from political
leaders to people who headed pro bono groups to community activists. And
as I said, it was always a learning experience. But it was an artificial
exercise.

And I think both parties recognized that. And, again, a good
broadcaster, which I deeply believe are most broadcasters, it is not
necessary today.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Having been on the other side of that exercise as
a community activist for about a decade and earlier on in my adult life,
I know that broadcasters use to come out and talk to the Commission for
Women or the Charter Review Commission, both which I chaired. And there
was a good exchange of information.

Today, we have in my example a county which has a population in excess
of 550,000 people. But the broadcasters in this metropolitan area do not
county executive races. They don\'t even at the time \-- perhaps this
has changed \-- but they did not even accept political advertising from
county executive races because there were a number of different
jurisdictions in the area. And the concern was the proliferation.

But how can one address a situation where a county of that size, for
example, has virtually no discourse on its commercial television
stations even during the course of a campaign?

MR. LaCAMERA: Well, again, groups this morning discussed the impact of
disenfranchised parents contacting a television station, meeting with
them and whatever. I mean, I think those avenues of accessibility are
always open. And even what we think is the enlightened city and an
enlightened television market of Boston, that happens all the time and
continues to happen.

It was interesting. I was reading in some NAB materials. And they try to
document the good works of broadcasters and do a wonderful job. And when
you see it combined \-- and, I mean, it is overwhelming impressive. But
I read about one station that did a 30 minute documentary in prime time
on attempting to butcher the Americans with Disabilities Act. Again, as
enlightened as I consider to be our television station, that thought
process would not have occurred to me or any of my mangers.

And, again, so it is that kind of input that people should feel
comfortable going \-- and it frequently happens. I mean, we are
involved, you know, in a large social justice issue in our city because
those are the people knocking at our doors. And I was very sad to hear
Sister\'s story.

First of all, my roots are Sisters of St. Joseph. And I knew that I
wouldn\'t be sitting on this panel with a Sister of St. Joseph who had
worked ten years in broadcasting. I would have never gotten on that
shuttle.

But, again, she is obviously describing a station that is operating
perhaps at the minimum. And that is very sad to hear. But, again, I
don\'t think you address that by looking at the whole \--

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: But how do we address that?

COMMISSIONER NESS: Mr. Goodman.

MR. GOODMAN: I shouldn\'t have used the word, \"ascertainment.\" I
really dated myself. What we actually called it in our report, what I
think \-- community outreach. And we didn\'t suggest we go back to
meetings and all that. We said that the station would regularly promote
the fact that it wanted input either by mail or electronic mail and that
in its quarterly report on its programming, it would talk about how that
conversation that developed affected the programming that they did.

So we were not suggesting ascertainment as we know or the rules of
ascertainment. We are just saying that the community outreach notion is
an important one. In put from the public.

COMMISSIONER NESS: And certainly, as cable systems engage in clustering
where they cover a metropolitan area, there is more and more activity on
cable systems that addresses some of the local issues then sometimes I
find on the local television stations. That ended up being perhaps
giving up of your birthright. And that is a frightening for
broadcasters.

MR. LaCAMERA: Those are cases that are complementing or supplementing
our birthright. I mean, cable does have the ability to provide niche
programming. And all of us have our special interests. And cable can
often serve it better. But in terms of serving the community as a whole
in dealing with the \-- you know, the most pronounced public policy
issues of that community, I still believe broadcasters do a pretty good
job at it.

COMMISSIONER NESS: And certainly, James \-- Jim, your approach where you
have a multiplicity of channels on the digital is one way of addressing
\--

MR. GOODMAN: All of those.

COMMISSIONER NESS: \-- the different communities.

MR. GOODMAN: But your question was what do we do about that.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Yes.

MR. GOODMAN: I can\'t say give me the license and trust me. I mean,
there is no circle of logic there. I mean, I \-- there are certainly
many fine \-- and I am talking about the future now. I am talking about
the future. We are going forward with the digital stations. And the
concept of minimum standards so that the public knows what is required
of us and we know what is required of us is to me a very logical sort of
approach to what we are trying to do.

Now, Paul is worried. I am worried. The NAB is worried. Everybody is
worried that, okay, Jim \-- and they have said this to me, okay, Jim,
well, these standards, that makes a lot of sense. But this is just going
to open the door. We are going to get started in this ever-spiraling \--
it is one hour a week now and the next Commission it will be three
hours. If we ever get into this, we are cooked. There is no end to it.

There has been some suggestion that Congress ought to do this. But \--
and even with that fear that by getting started on this we are a run
away train, it is very logical to me that the public should know and we
should know the minimum requirements for satisfying the public interest.
I cannot logically argue against that.

It doesn\'t have anything to do with how broadcasters are operating now.
It has to do with how we are going to run this place, these things in
the future. So that is my answer to what we are going to do it, minimal
standards to give the broadcasters an unbelievable flexibility to
operate within the parameter of local programming.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Is this something that could be subsumed within a
voluntary code?

MR. GOODMAN: We could certainly have recommendations of a voluntary
code.

MR. LaCAMERA: I mean, for the record, and I presume the NAB witness
here, the NAB has both antitrust and constitutional concerns about the
\--

COMMISSIONER NESS: Assuming the antitrust issues could be addressed.

MR. LaCAMERA: I supported it publicly as a member of the Gore Commission
and remain enthused about the concept.

COMMISSIONER NESS: Mr. Chairman, I believe Sister Parks has wanted to
chime in here.

SISTER PARKS: I don\'t know. Is it appropriate to do that?

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Yes, please.

SISTER PARKS: I just wanted to say that if you could claim the two
gentlemen over here, we would be a lot better off. And Mr. LaCamera is
way too modest. As a member of UNDA which is a professional Catholic
communications group, how many years in a row have you been the best
broadcasting station in the United States by our terms?

MR. LaCAMERA: You are right. I had Sisters of St. Joseph.

SISTER PARKS: Well, thank you. I will take the credit. But could I just
say that, you know, if there was that much competition for what he does,
his station wouldn\'t be winning year after year after year after year.
He is way too modest. We need a lot more broadcasters like the gentlemen
sitting at this table.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: I think what we are hearing is that these gentlemen
are the exceptions and not the rule. I mean, that\'s what I heard. That
is what I heard from \--

MR. LaCAMERA: It is not the case at all, Mr. Chairman.

MR. GOODMAN: My view is we don\'t know. How do we know? There is no
reporting requirements. I mean, we know stations are doing great things.
But, I mean, we don\'t know how much \-- there aren\'t any reporting
requirements. That is why one of the first things we said was list \--
let\'s come up with sort of a quarterly report and let\'s \-- so the
truth is we don\'t know.

But we do \-- we don\'t know factually. We do know that there is a whole
lot of good things done by broadcasters. But \-- yes.

MR. LaCAMERA: Wonderful things.

MR. GOODMAN: Yes.

MR. LaCAMERA: Admirable.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Well, for the record, one of the \--

MR. GOODMAN: Entertainment though. When you hear Paul start with his
stuff, you get to wondering a little bit.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Just for the record, I wanted to note that there is a
pending proceeding proposing enhanced disclosure requirements of just
this sort of local originated programming so that we can get a better
handle on what broadcasters are doing in their local markets.

MR. GOODMAN: I think Paul wrote that for the Gore Commission, didn\'t
he? Do you want to \--

MR. LaCAMERA: Yes. I mean, again, Jim is so generous in many ways and
certainly doesn\'t represent the thinking of the vast majority of
broadcasters. And I am probably in the middle, more moderate ground.
Then, of course, you have a large group of strict constructionists who
are very concerned about First Amendment.

And I am, as well. But as I, again, said in my companion submission to
the Gore Commission report, I deeply believe that broadcasters still
have an enviable record of public service. And I don\'t think there
should be any hesitation to document that.

MR. TAYLOR: Can I make one quick comment on disclosure?

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Yes.

MR. TAYLOR: It is a first cousin of what we have been talking about. But
it is disclosure of revenue from political advertising. Some years ago,
the FCC imposed a regulation on all stations that it keep a so-called
public file of all the ad revenue it received from political candidates.
We think this is a useful tool. We think the reasons for it are very
sound. When you have political advertisers on your local stations, you,
the public, deserve to be able to know and go and find out how much they
cost, who is paying for them, et cetera.

These rules were crafted in an era where the only advertisers in
political campaigns were the candidates themselves. That era doesn\'t
exist any more. And now we have political campaigns \-- a lot of
political campaigns where it is Candidate Jones and Candidate Smith are
not the two biggest advertisers in their own race. It is their
respective political parties and it is the issue advocacy groups.

And I would think on the disclosure front, I would urge you to consider
a more robust disclosure for the public file when it comes to political
advertising so you would have a clearer picture of how much money is
moving into the broadcasting industry.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Thank you. Commissioner Powell.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: I want to turn to the issue on the ads. You said
you don\'t question the logic. Let me make a separate challenge.
Sometimes minimal standards codify minimum behavior. That is, that, you
know, oh, throw me on the briar patch. That is, if there are minimal
standards, there won\'t be necessarily the pressures to produce higher
levels of local oriented programming or more interested programming.

It seems to me \-- I would agree with the point Mr. Geller made which is
I don\'t think anybody needs to be beating local television stations
into local news in most markets. I think there is competitive and
economic reasons why those programmings are provided.

Sometimes what I get concerned about, about pictures about minimal
standards, is they do then make that the minimum that in some
oligopolistic way everyone sticks to it. One of the things I think \-- I
think Mr. Geller\'s proposal deserves some very serious consideration
for a number of reasons. Number one, it starts to harmonize the
treatment across multiple mediums that we know are competing for the
same entertainment, kind of consumers or products.

It seems to me that it allows you to create a format for the
subsidization of true market failures. And by removing this special
status, it requires people to compete quite aggressively and to
differentiate themselves. And these programmers might produce a lot
better than the government would be able to bring itself constrained by
the First Amendment to minimum standards.

So I guess I throw that open for your response. But particularly, I am
curious as to what broadcasters\' responses are to a proposal like that
and why it is appropriate or inappropriate. And then I will follow up. I
have a question for Professor Raskin.

MR. GOODMAN: There are broadcasters that do their \-- I have \-- you
know, I have concentrated on public affairs and public service
announcements. I have concentrated on those. But there are television
stations that don\'t do any local news. I mean, I think there are a
group of stations that do much more than these minimum requirements that
we have as a \-- because of who they are and what they think and what
they are supposed to do.

I also think there are stations that don\'t do any of it. And we are
working on the \-- we are working on at least establishing as a floor
that this business is about localism. And if you want this license, then
you need to do some local programming. I think the stations that for all
kinds of reasons want to do more will do more as a sort of a business
issue.

And I was \-- what did I think of Mr. Geller\'s suggestion. It sounded
like to me he was giving up on us.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Or saying you are not special.

MR. GOODMAN: Yes. Well, I think he thinks we are special. And I think he
believes in localism. And I think he believes we have gotten to the
point that since there are no requirements and the public interest
notion is not defined, then let\'s go ahead and get some money and fund
public television. I mean, that\'s \-- but that\'s \-- I can\'t \-- how
is that, Mr. Geller?

MR. GELLER: I have given up. I agree with that. But I want to tell you
why. The Commission in \'81 and \'84 said just send a postcard in. We
are going to rely on the public. The public is out shopping at malls and
does not go into stations and won\'t go over the list and file a
petition to deny.

I don\'t know how many petitions to deny we\'ve gotten. If you did get
them, you would be embarrassed by them because if there was a very small
amount of local public service, you never told the broadcaster what he
had to do. He is in the dark because everything is so mushy. And in the
[Greater Boston]{.underline} case in 444 Fed. 2nd \--

(Laughter.)

\-- the Court said that many standards ought to be \-- the discretion to
deal with removal ought to be contained by some standards. But I really
do come back to that it is very difficult to handle this area. We are in
a First Amendment area where it gets very sensitive.

Reed Hunt when he did the three hours of meetings, he said that \"Inside
NBA\" doesn\'t qualify. And he now named the two educational
psychologists that said it did. I don\'t know how you handle this area
at all. It is a social purpose. I am now just sticking with one example,
the educational one.

You can cite social purpose. If you cite that the \"Little Mermaid\"
teaches girls how to be leaders, what are you going to do with that? And
you can go on and on that way. And all I was suggesting is that what you
want is high quality public service programming. The government can\'t
do quality. It is subjective. It would violate the First Amendment.

And, therefore, I suggested that if you take them out and you give it to
somebody who does want to do it, then you don\'t have to worry what they
do, what is the quality. We know what public broadcasting will do. And
finally, I do come back to what Commissioner Powell has said. There has
been an explosion here.

You have cable in about 68 percent. You have DBS in ten percent and
growing or however much. But you have almost 80 percent now getting
digital, multi-channel programming. We have the internet coming along
and the video screen will come get the broad band.

And it seems to me that the Congress failed in the \'96 Act. It did
something right about the common carrier area. But it just kept a
70-year-old thing going back to 1927, even though it is in the
twenty-first century. And it makes no sense to single out broadcasting
for this very difficult behavioral content regulation that is
ineffectual.

I\'ll petition to deny coming in. The emperor has no clothes here. And I
think you ought to move on. And that is what that was about.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Mr. LaCamera?

MR. LaCAMERA: Well, obviously, I couldn\'t disagree more on several
fronts. First of all, you used the term, \"special\", Commissioner. And
for better or for worse, many Americans have if not most Americans now
receive their local television. I am sure that is not what you would
encourage for your sons and what I encourage for my sons. But as long as
that is the case, we are going to take this seriously.

Secondly, the issues of \-- that were discussed this morning and this
afternoon about spectrum fees or pay or play, it is not something that
most broadcasters have been interested in whatsoever. I mean, I think
the last time in Boston that a group bought their way out of their
public obligations was in the Civil War. They paid off people they fight
for. We have no interest in paying off people to perform our public
obligations for us, as well.

So, again, I know on these issues that, you know, sometimes when I have
had the opportunity to represent our industry \-- people say Boston is
different. WCVB is different. Hearst Argile is different. But you
continue to expand that. I sincerely also believe that I, more than Jim,
represent most broadcasters in this country in these beliefs.

MR. GELLER: In ten seconds, I just want to say I don\'t believe in play
or pay. I don\'t want them to play. I want them to pay. That\'s it.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Commissioner Powell, did you have any other questions?

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Well, it was less a question than an ask for an
expansion. Professor Raskin, you sort of talked about \-- you quickly
rushed over a phrase in which you thought that there was a danger of
entertainment diverting interests from civic discourse which I thought
was an astute observation, particularly your distinction between
consumers and citizens which I think really gets to the rub because part
of the problem with the rampant criticism about, oh, financial interests
instead of public interests first is if that is really an initially
exclusive choice. Because, one, I don\'t understand if you have always
pursued a commercial broadcasting industry.

And one of the things that financial interests means is the maximization
of eyeballs by virtue of the fact that the content is given away from
free in essence. So the money is made by maximizing people watching it
which it is sort of the way I think this area gets most touchy. Because
it is not about what consumers are watching or choose to watch. It is
about what we would sort of \-- to use a dirty word \-- prefer they
watch or at least maximize their options or at least some lesser version
of funneling their interests.

That then gets to what you were touching on. What I find challenging
about that, which I think is a fair construct \-- what I find
challenging about it is with the explosion that Henry Geller just talked
about, the competition for diversion is enormous and certainly not
limited to broadcasting. And I am sort of intrigued by the notion that
on the Presidential debate day, I guess we should close Blockbuster
video, we should deny people access to books.

How were you suggesting that this trend which I think you have rightly
identified about entertainment of what the consumers may choose over
civic mindedness and is that \-- is there really a place for that in
communication policy?

PROFESSOR RASKIN: Well, I think there has got to be because if there is
not in communications policy, it is hard to see where we do deal with
it.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: And education policy, civic minded, you know.

PROFESSOR RASKIN: Well, I think it is all of a piece. I mean, there is
an important symbolic and expressive dimension to what you do in this
field. I mean, if you say either there is no meaningful public interest
requirements that we are going to be able to lay down guidelines for, we
are not \-- we were going to police them, essentially what we are saying
is that we will leave it to either the dwindling band of broadcasters
who really believe in a public citizenship ethic or we are just going to
let the market decide.

But I guess the point I am trying to make is the one that you referenced
which is that there is a difference between the project marketplace, the
realm of economics and the realm of politics. And it is true that
precisely because of the kind of broadcasting we have developed as well
as other cultural trends, people are much more prone to view themselves
as consumers and to want to be passive spectators of television and then
active consumers. People go out and buy things.

And I think the government is not an innocent bystander here to say,
well, if people want the consumers \-- or the consumers if they want to
be citizens, we will let them be citizens. I think the government
specifically addresses this. You have to structure meaningful
opportunities for people to be citizens and to take your role seriously
as making sure that there are opportunities for real civic education and
involvement to go on.

And the reason that I link this to the question of critical debates and
candidate forums are that if those are done in the right way and, that
is, that they are open to all candidates or different political parties
and persuasions, there is a lot more public interest and a lot more
engagement with them.

To the extent that they seem more like rehearsed spectacles where all
the important issues have already been decided. And it is a control
format and discussion. And people do tune out and they would rather
watch mud wrestling or what have you. So that is why I think it is
important to profess the importance of democratic pluralism at the same
time that we say that there has got to be an obligation to cover local,
state and national.

I guess the last point on this is that Tokeville said that the spirit of
freedom in the United States draws in local community. That is the
opportunity where people actually have the occasion to taste freedom and
what it means to see fellow citizens engaged in a common public
enterprise and to be seen by other citizens engaging in common public
enterprise.

And if we let that go, we literally could lose what it means to have
public space as public spaces get bought up and privatized in different
facets. So the obligation you have here is tremendously important on
both the mere material level and also at the symbolic and expressive
level, as well.

COMMISSIONER POWELL: Just two quick points. Thank you. I mean, I thought
that was very insightful. But the tension that I find as a public policy
maker is \-- another form of our citizenry is the right not to do those
things you suggest. I would never suggest that an American citizen is
not free to disengage if he or she chooses. And the government won\'t
otherwise chorus that participation.

I\'m saying Tokeville himself predicted the demise of America many
centuries ago because it is believed that we value too highly individual
choice of freedom. And that individualism would destroy the public.
Thank goodness it didn\'t happen.

But I just throw that out as part of the tensions we deal with in this
area, is \-- and I am deeply concerned about it. Paul Taylor and others
have really highlighted the concerns that this has for a functioning
democracy. On the other hand, sort of up to the limits of one\'s right
not to if they choose.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. I wanted to come back to Paul Schroeder who had
a comment he wanted to make.

MR. SCHROEDER: Thanks. I feel like we have missed out on something here.
We have been talking about those who are privileged to use the public
space. But we haven\'t been talking about the whole public that it seems
to me they are obliged to serve.

And this whole business of community outreach, I think many of us in the
disability community would be thrilled if a broadcaster would ever come
and talk to us and get our views on what is important. And many are
starting to do that which is commendable. And I don\'t fault Paul\'s
station for not thinking of doing the ADA.

But maybe if there were some EEO rules that talked about diversity and
seeking and recruiting people with disabilities, there might be folks on
staff who would remind you of that kind of commitment. And maybe if
there was some form of community outreach where we were talking to other
organizations, there might be folks who would bring that to your
attention because it is not the kind of thing that Frank or somebody who
hasn\'t been challenged by disability is going to think of probably on
their own.

I would say this. You\'ve got in a couple of months the fifth
anniversary of the Telecom Act. How about doing something a little
different and taking a documentary on access provisions for people with
disabilities, that act? I know you are going to do something on where
the money went. And everybody is going to do that. But how about looking
at something that doesn\'t get covered sufficiently?

And I would turn I guess Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth\'s analogy not on
its head, but back a little bit and say what if all of that information
he talked about came to you in a language that isn\'t yours and could
only be made available if you could find somebody to translate it? Or
what if every other word were obscured? Or what if it was mimed over
your cell. phone? That would be useful.

That is the kind of challenge that people with disabilities face. We
have talked a lot here this afternoon about whether the Commission can
effect the content and the nature of programming that is provided. And I
don\'t have a dog in that fight I guess. But \-- directly for my
purposes today.

But I do think the Commission has a very key role to play in setting
expectations for consumers and for in this purposes broadcasters in the
digital environment. And that is to make sure that whatever they are
doing, whatever content they choose to provide and however they choose
to provide it \-- we haven\'t talked a whole lot about what this digital
television space is going to look like today. But it is not going to be
the same, obviously, as what people confront now on their television
dials.

So however that information is provided across these digital channels,
high definition channels, extra audio channels, data channels, however
that is provided, we have to make sure that the whole public is served
by that information. I haven\'t heard a word about that today
unfortunately. And I am not faulting. I guess that is why I got to be on
this panel, so that I would make sure that it got raised.

But I do hope that the Commission will take this opportunity to set
clear expectations. We have heard from the broadcasters here that they
need to know what they are. The consumers, including consumers with
disabilities, have a right to know what is expected, too. And I think at
the dawn of this digital age is the time to set these expectations, not
two or three years later once things are set in stone and then we are
trying to dismantle some of it.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: I couldn\'t agree with you more. If there are any
questions \-- more questions for the panel.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I have \--

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Okay. Let\'s go to Commissioner Tristani. And I really
want to open the mikes and get some opportunity for people to ask
questions of the panel from the floor. So if you could \-- if you have
questions out there, please be thinking of them. And Commissioner
Tristani, why don\'t you go ahead.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Yes. I had a follow-up question for Mr. Taylor
and actually for others on the panel. Paul, you mentioned that the
disclosure \-- I don\'t know if you want to call it requirement \-- but
that being the public file, the amount spent on campaigns by candidates
has been a good thing. And I\'ve got to agree with you. It has got to be
good for the public to be informed who is paying for these ads.

And you mentioned it would be a good thing if now the public might be
informed what are the groups that paid for that. Do you have any figures
on who much money is actually coming in from candidates versus groups?
And then for others, I would like you to comment on whether you think
could be a good thing to have these requirements apply to all the money
that is spent on the electoral process.

MR. TAYLOR: Commissioner Tristani, we don\'t have hard figures because
there is no place they are collected. So it is a frustration. We can
make some estimates on the Annenburg Public Policy Center, for example,
has tracked these so-called issue groups that have done a lot of
advertising around campaigns and estimates that the spending is in the
neighborhood of 300 million dollars on television ads this year. But
that is just an estimate. And it is not based on any hard data.

But just to stay with this point, I mean, I think it very much feeds in
to the very eloquent statement that Professor Raskin made and the
broadcasters here on how precious the public square is. And I, too, am
in awe of Henry Geller. But I, like the broadcasters, disagree with him
on having given up.

There is a marketplace rationale for singling out the broadcasters. In
addition to the democratic rationale, in addition to 70 years of
constitutional history here, here we are in the year 2000, this
extraordinary medium-rich environment we all recognize is happening
before us, the typical candidate will spend between 80 and 90 cents out
of every dollar on a local broadcast station. We are talking about
candidates for President down to dog catcher.

That in this extraordinary media-rich environment, that is where the
overwhelming percentage of the money goes because the candidate
understands the unique power of broadcast television because it is based
in the community, because it is in 99 percent of people\'s households,
because it comes over the air for free.

So that has become the arena for the most powerful communication in our
campaigns. And when Paul LaCamera says his problem is he has no races to
cover this year, one of the reasons is we don\'t have very many
competitive races for Congress or any other office because we have
created this pay-to-play model.

You want to talk in the most important medium of communication, you have
to raise a million bucks if you are running for Congress or \$500,000.00
if you are running for state senate. And a lot of people can\'t hit that
threshold. So it is a very incumbent-friendly system we have evolved
into.

One of the reasons why it is so difficult to change the law is because
the incumbents are the ones who write the law. But I do believe that the
market is telling us something very important here which is that
broadcast television remains uniquely powerful in the realm of political
discourse. And if you want to look for places to get better and more
robust information than just what you get from the 30-second spot \--
and doing away with it doesn\'t disadvantage people without any money
\-- you\'ve got to a little broadcast television.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Anybody else want to comment on that?

MR. LaCAMERA: Well, as far as enhancing your reporting system, I don\'t
think any broadcasters would object to that if it would be helpful to
the process. What you should know is aside from a few groups like
Paul\'s, most people who are interested in what is in their public files
are their campaigns. And they visit them every day to see what the other
candidate is spending.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: I know that.

MR. LaCAMERA: It is intriguing to watch.

COMMISSIONER TRISTANI: Having been in a campaign myself in my past.

MR. LaCAMERA: Right.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: Yes?

MR. GOODMAN: If I may just make \-- and this is a little off the
subject. The issue is how obtuse my views are compared to the typical
broadcaster\'s views. And while I think Paul thinks I am a little out of
touch, but in a different position, I really do view my \-- what I have
suggested as in between greedy.com and the best operator in the country.

And I can\'t \-- this needs to make sense now. We\'ve got to stop
singing things that don\'t connect. These licenses \-- that is not in my
license. It is the public\'s license. I am just holding onto it. You all
represent the public. Don\'t represent me.

The public deserves to know what is expected of us even if it is
nothing. And I cannot say give me the license, don\'t give me any
minimum qualifications, and don\'t charge me anything. Now, I can\'t
connect that as a reasonable position to take. So I am trying to get in
the middle. I mean, I am trying to say voluntary code real important,
minimum standards a way that gets the public access to the airwaves. And
we can move along in this.

Really, the great news is the digital future is so exciting. I mean,
things are not bad. Things are good. Let\'s get this \-- get everybody
together and come up with a reasonable way of defining our obligations
and roll.

CHAIRMAN KENNARD: It sounds like a very reasonable position to me. And
with that, I would like to invite anyone up to the microphones who would
\-- if anyone has any questions for the panel. If not, unless there are
additional questions from the bench, I would like to thank you all for
what was a very, very robust discussion.

I appreciate \-- I particularly appreciate the testimony of the two
broadcasters who came here today. I know it is sometimes not easy to \--
especially for you, Mr. Goodman, to come forward and speak your mind
like you did. And I really appreciate your candor. And all the rest of
you did a fabulous job. Thank you all very, very much for being here. So
we are adjourned. Thank you.

(Whereupon, at 4:03 p.m. on Monday, October 16, 2000, the hearing in the
above-entitled matter was adjourned.)

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**[REPORTER\'S CERTIFICATE]{.underline}**

**CASE TITLE**: En Banc Hearing on the Public Interest

Obligations of TV Broadcast Licensees

**HEARING DATE**: October 16, 2000

**LOCATION**: Washington, D.C.

I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully
and accurately on the tapes and notes reported by me at the hearing in
the above case before the Federal Communications Commission.

Date: \_10-16-00\_
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

Gabriel Thomas

Official Reporter

Heritage Reporting Corporation

1220 L Street, N.W., Suite 600

Washington, D.C. 20005-4018

**[TRANSCRIBER\'S CERTIFICATE]{.underline}**

I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence were fully and
accurately transcribed from the tapes and notes provided by the above
named reporter in the above case before the Federal Communications
Commission.

Date: \_10-26-00\_
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

Bonnie Niemann

Official Transcriber

Heritage Reporting Corporation

**[PROOFREADER\'S CERTIFICATE]{.underline}**

I hereby certify that the transcript of the proceedings and evidence in
the above referenced case that was held before the Federal
Communications Commission was proofread on the date specified below.

Date: \_10-26-00\_
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

Lorenzo Jones

Official Proofreader

Heritage Reporting Corporation