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S. HRG. 108–973 

PUBLIC INTEREST AND LOCALISM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, 

SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 23, 2003 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation 

( 

(II) 

SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION 

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

CONRAD BURNS, Montana 

TRENT LOTT, Mississippi 

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas 

OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas 

GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon 

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South Carolina, 

Ranking 

DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii 

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia 

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts 

JOHN B. BREAUX, Louisiana 

BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota 

RON WYDEN, Oregon 

BARBARA BOXER, California 

BILL NELSON, Florida 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

JEANNE BUMPUS, Republican Staff Director and General Counsel 

ROBERT W. CHAMBERLIN, Republican Chief Counsel 

KEVIN D. KAYES, Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

GREGG ELIAS, Democratic General Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on July 23, 2003 ............................................................................... 1 

Statement of Senator Cantwell .............................................................................. 77 

Statement of Senator Dorgan ................................................................................. 4 

Statement of Senator Hollings ............................................................................... 2 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 4 

Statement of Senator Lautenberg .......................................................................... 6 

Statement of Senator McCain ................................................................................. 1 

WITNESSES

Bozell III, L. Brent, President and Founder, Parents Television Council .......... 63 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 65 

Copps, Hon. Michael J., Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9 

Corn-Revere, Robert, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP ............................... 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 16 

Davis, David J., President and General Manager, WPVI—Channel 6 ............... 48 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 51 

Faber, Barry M., Vice President and General Counsel, Sinclair Broadcast 

Group, Inc. ............................................................................................................ 45 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47 

Kaplan, Dean Martin, Director, USC Annenberg Norman Lean Center and 

Associate Dean, USC Annenberg School for Communication .......................... 57 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59 

APPENDIX

Inouye, Hon. Daniel K., U.S. Senator from Hawaii, prepared statement ........... 93 

(1) 

PUBLIC INTEREST AND LOCALISM 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2003 

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m. in room SR– 

253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John McCain, Chairman 

of the Committee, presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN MCCAIN, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM ARIZONA 

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. Today, the Committee meets to 

examine the much-debated public interest standard set forth in the 

Communications Act of 1934. For almost 70 years, academics, Federal Communication Commission commissioners, courts, and legislators have discussed the meaning of the phrase, quote, ‘‘public interest, convenience, and necessity,’’ unquote. It’s mentioned almost 

a hundred times in the Communications Act, in one form or another, but never defined. 

Broadcasters are the trustees of the public’s airwaves, and, in return, the government asks, and the statute requires, that broadcasters serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity. Critics, including several recent and former FCC commissioners, have 

charged that the public interest mandate is vague, providing neither guidance nor constraint on the agency’s regulatory and licensing actions. 

Currently, FCC Chairman Michael Powell has stated, quote, 

‘‘The lack of guidance leaves those governed by the standard at a 

loss as to how to structure their conduct to be compliant.’’ And I 

dare say it invites mischief by regulators and special interests to 

advance parochial interest under the guise of public interest. 

This Committee has spent considerable time examining and debating the role of ownership limitations to achieve public interest 

goals. These issues will continue to be debated. I want to emphasize, they will continue to be debated. 

Today’s hearing is to consider whether Congress should use other 

means to achieve these goals, such as putting teeth in the public 

interest standard. We will discuss the role that locally originated 

programming should play in determining whether a broadcaster is 

serving the public interest. Previously, the Commission’s rules included local programming mandates for radio and TV. These requirements were removed in the early 1980s, because the Commission found that during the short time the programming mandates 

were in place, commercial television broadcasters exceeded the 

2 

mandates in every program category, thereby making the mandates unnecessary. Recently, some legislators have discussed the 

return of local programming mandates for broadcasters. 

Since 1996, the radio industry has experienced dramatic consolidation. Multiple witnesses before this Committee have bemoaned 

the negative effects they claim consolidation has had on localism. 

In January 2000, the FCC sought to promote the use of radio to 

provide local content by creating a new class of radio stations, low 

power FM radio services. Despite being supported by state and 

local governments, community organizations, musicians, religious 

groups, and students, low power FM was severely curtailed by a 

rider added to an appropriations bill late in 2000, at the behest of 

the powerful broadcast lobby. Broadcasters masqueraded their concern about competition from these new stations in claims that 

lower power FM could cause them interference. Late last month, an 

independent study stripped the broadcasters of this disguise by 

concluding that these stations would cause virtually no interference 

under the FCC’s original rules. 

While it may be too late to turn back the clock on the radio consolidation that has occurred, we should take another look at low 

power FM as a means of providing the public with a locally oriented alternative to huge national radio networks. 

On today’s second panel, we will hear from Dean Kaplan about 

the disturbing dearth of coverage of political campaigns by broadcasters. Next week, I’ll be introducing a bill similar to the one I introduced in the 107th Congress that would establish minimum requirements for issue-centered or candidate-centered programming 

by broadcasters, and would also provide candidates and national 

committees of political parties with vouchers that they may use for 

political advertisements. 

The purpose of the legislation is to increase the flow of political 

information in broadcast media, and reduce the cost to candidates 

of reaching voters. Our democracy is stronger when a candidate’s 

success is achieved by ideas and not by dollars. 

I appreciate our witnesses for joining us today, and I look forward to hearing your views. 

Senator Hollings? 

STATEMENT OF HON. ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH CAROLINA 

Senator HOLLINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, particularly for this hearing, because it is necessary. 

When it comes to the public interest, let’s go back to the sinking 

of the Lusitania in 1912, when I think it was Sarnoff who got on 

top of the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia with his wireless, 

receiving the list of those who were saved. And they gathered 

around, day and night there, for three days and three nights. 

That immediately led to a overwhelming desire, of course, for 

wireless radio. And, by the mid-1920s, under Secretary Hoover, the 

Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, everyone had a wireless 

radio set, and everyone was—owned a set and—operating and jamming. 

And I think that’s a fundamental that ought not to be missed, 

and that is that here is an industry that came to government and 

3 

said, ‘‘For heaven sakes, regulate us.’’ Because allowed market 

forces to do as we choose, no one can get through. Obviously, the 

airwaves belong to the public itself, and it was responded to by the 

1934 Act. 

But it’s very good to read just one section, because those who 

don’t want to respond and recognize pornography—for example, as 

Potter Stewart says, ‘‘You know it when you see it’’—similarly, the 

public interest, you understand and know it when you see it. You 

know what the public interest is. We’re all here, in this room, interested in the public interest. But here’s what they said at the 

very initiation, the very beginning days there, of that 1934 Act. 

The conscience and judgment of a station’s management are necessarily personal. The station, itself, must be operated as if owned 

by the public. It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the best man in sight, with this injunction, 

‘‘Manage this station in our interest.’’ The standing of every station 

is determined by that conception. 

Now we had a Chairman come onboard, Mr. Michael Powell, who 

ridiculed that conception. He said he didn’t know what public interest was. As far as he could understand or see, it was an empty vessel. In fact, I think it was the day after, or two days after, his 

swearing in, he remarked, at one conference, that he was waiting 

for the public interest fairy to appear, but she never showed up. 

And he just ridiculed the idea, let the market forces take over, let 

them run rampant, the heck with 25, 35, 45, 55 percent ownership, 

cross-ownership, or anything else. He’s had the bit in his teeth to 

ruin a regulatory commission. There isn’t any doubt in my mind. 

So I think it’s highly important that we come together and understand that we are operating in the public interest. I’ve worked— 

I notice Mr. Markey over there said 20-some years. I’ve been on 

this Committee since I got in here, in 1966, almost 37 years. And 

we have worked with John Pastore and all the people, chairmen, 

who have come along the line, and everything else. 

And, Mr. Chairman, it’s particularly to your credit that you understand this and that we’re having a hearing which is very, very 

necessary under the circumstances, because we’re suffering from 

monopolization. 

We’ve got two groups. We’ve got that one big boy crowd. I understand one of them’s here today, representing Disney. I wish I could 

go down and start reading the list of their ownership. It would take 

us until roll call, I can tell you that right now. All of them, whether 

it’s news, AOL/Time-Warner, Viacom, whatever. Those big boys, 

they want to monopolize the country. But there’s a similar movement of station owners around the affiliates that they want to monopolize the community. 

They’re saying, over on the House side, if you noticed the activity 

there yesterday, that, ‘‘Oh, goodness gracious, let’s cut the 45 back 

to 35, but don’t cut the cross-ownership. No, no, because we’d like 

our little monopoly.’’ So it’s a sort of sweetheart deal they’ve got 

going on over here. And I think under the leadership of Senator 

Dorgan, we may stop it. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Hollings follows:] 

4 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today, the Committee renews its focus on the media 

marketplace and the fundamental obligation of all broadcast licensees to serve the 

public interest. From its very beginnings, our system of broadcast regulation has 

been built around our Nation’s collective desire to ensure that the public airwaves 

are used to serve, educate, and inform individual citizens in local communities. 

In the early days of radio, there were seemingly no limits to this desire, as broadcasting captured the public imagination and evolved from a technological novelty 

into a full-fledged business with mass audience appeal. But as radio grew, so too 

did interference. Thus, to accommodate both the needs of individual citizens to make 

use of technology and the needs of broadcasters to protect the commercial viability 

of the medium, a compromise was struck whereby government imposed a licensing 

scheme limiting the number of available licenses, but obligating each licensee, first 

and foremost, to use this privilege to meet the civic needs of local communities. 

Accordingly, unlike other of their corporate kindred, broadcasters have always existed as public fiduciaries—prohibited from owning the public airwaves but granted 

the right to use certain frequencies for limited periods of time so long as 

Such use serves the public interest. As the Federal radio commission, the precursor to today’s Federal Communications Commission once explained this ‘‘public 

trustee’’ model of broadcasting: 

[t]he conscience and judgment of a station’s management are necessarily personal. . . . The station itself must be operated as if owned by the public. . . . 

It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the 

best man in sight with this injunction, ‘‘manage this station in our interest.’’ 

the standing of every station is determined by that conception. 

Unfortunately, recent action taken by the FCC to give large media corporations 

even greater control over the public airwaves threatens to abandon this long-standing principle. 

Since the FCC’s ill-fated decision on June 2, we have seen a torrent of citizen outrage aimed at rule changes that will let big media get bigger, will allow programming decisions made in New York and Hollywood to trump community standards, 

and will reduce the number of diverse voices available in local communities. 

As the American public continues to digest details of the FCC proposal, opposition 

to the FCC’s plan appears to be growing. Indeed, according to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, by a margin of roughly 10 to 1 (70 percent to 

6 percent), Americans who have heard about the FCC’s rules changes resoundingly 

believe that the impact on our country will be negative, not positive. 

Moreover, the direction in which the FCC’s decision heads is all the more disheartening given the telltale signs in today’s media marketplace that consolidation 

is fueling a ‘‘race-to-the-bottom’’ with regard to broadcast programming. Parents are 

increasingly frustrated by the constant stream of lurid, inappropriate material 

broadcast on television and spewed out by radio shock jocks. Similarly, network programmers continue to demonstrate a careless disregard for the well-being of children as programs increasingly rely on graphic and excessive violence in an attempt 

to boost ratings points. 

Mr. Chairman, today’s hearing gives this committee an important opportunity to 

remind broadcasters that there is a difference between programming that serves the 

public interest and programming that attracts the most public attention. The obligation to serve the public interest extends to the entire public and not just the male, 

18 to 30 demographic so coveted by Madison Avenue. 

Accordingly, in light of the central role that our broadcast media play in keeping 

government and business accountable to the American people, in educating our children, and in supporting the values of deliberative democracy, I welcome our examination of current public interest obligations and look forward to the testimony of 

the witnesses and to their answers to our questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Our leader. 

[Laughter.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. BYRON L. DORGAN, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM NORTH DAKOTA 

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Chairman, I always feel horribly inadequate following both you and also Senator Hollings. You’ve now 

5 

been on the Committee for—how many years is it? Thirty-seven 

years? 

Senator HOLLINGS. Yup. 

Senator DORGAN. IYou’ve now been on the Committee for 37 

years. But over those 37 years, I was reflecting, as Senator Hollings was speaking, both under Democrat and Republican Administrations, I think the American public has dis-served by decisions of 

the Federal Communications Commission, and especially now. 

We’ve reached kind of the apex of this irresponsibility. Instead of 

localism and public interest representing the timeless truths of 

what we have licensing for the airwaves to accomplish, localism 

and public interest are sort of treated as hopelessly old-fashioned 

virtues or values. 

The FCC is making a horrible mistake. They are producing rules 

that will further enhance concentration, this galloping orgy of concentration and mergers. And I may be hopelessly old-fashioned, but 

I believe that when the American public owns the airwaves, it has 

a responsibility to license them with restrictions, and those restrictions say that part of the requirement to use these airwaves that 

belong to the American public is that they be used in the public 

interest and that there be localism, diversity, and competition associated with it. Frankly, we’ve gotten so far away from that, it’s 

hard to describe. 

Now, there are some good things going on out there. I was north 

of Grafton, North Dakota, in a huge storm, one of the most aggressive storms I’ve ever seen. And the young man that runs the radio 

program, the news program, in Grafton, KXPO, he was out in his 

car on hilltops in the middle of that storm broadcasting where the 

tornadoes were touching down. That’s localism at its best. 

A week ago, 2 weeks ago, at Bismarck, KFOR, exactly the same 

thing, one of the more aggressive storms I’ve seen. Two people out 

making their discussions with—or providing discussion with the 

public about where the storm was moving, what was happening, 

the size of the hail, the amount of wind, and tornado sightings. 

KFGO, in Fargo, with respect to the 1997 flood, wonderful public 

service. All of that is localism at its best. 

But we’ve gotten so far away from that. We now have voice 

tracking, people pretending they’re in a city, broadcasting, when, in 

fact, they’re not. You know the description of Minot, at 2:00 in the 

morning, when the anhydrous-ammonia car goes off the track, explodes, and envelopes the city in a plume of deadly gas, and they 

call the radio station—nobody’s home. You know, the same company owns six stations, all six commercial stations, in that city. 

There’s so much wrong with what’s going on. And at the root of it, 

I think, is that we’ve failed to discuss the genuine issues of public 

interest and localism. What should we expect, and what should be 

required with respect to broadcasting? 

We ought to bring back the fairness doctrine. Frankly, people 

think Congress got rid of that. We didn’t. The FCC got rid of the 

fairness doctrine. We tried to reinstate it, and President Reagan 

vetoed the bill. But the fairness doctrine ought to be reinstated. 

The Supreme Court, in a redline case, said it is the right of the 

viewers and listeners, not the right of broadcasters, which is paramount. 

6 

And, finally, we’re going to have some testimony today about another aspect of localism that I think is very important, and that is 

local standards. And something that’s produced in Hollywood or 

New York, and they say, ‘‘You must carry this in your community,’’ 

and I’d just encourage all of you to take a look at the dialogue in 

Mr. Bozell’s testimony, which I read last night, over one of the networks that goes out about a plot, on one of the major networks, 

about a band of thugs trafficking in horse semen, hiring a prostitute to perform a sex act with a horse to extract semen from the 

horse, and then Mr. Bozell will describe the dialogue in this piece 

of trash. And the fact is, many of these local stations cannot refuse 

to carry it, because if they do, there will be financial consequences 

and they could lose their affiliation with the network. This is the 

sort of thing that I think also moves far away from localism. 

And I’m really—Mr. Chairman, I didn’t mean to take this much 

time, but thank you for holding a hearing on this. It has been ignored far too long. Your attention to it is something I deeply appreciate. And I say the same to Senator Hollings. Perhaps, with this 

attention, we’re going to make some progress on these issues. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. We’ll certainly look forward to Mr. 

Bozell’s testimony. 

[Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lautenberg? 

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

And I’m kind of pleased to join the chorus here of those who express the concern that we do here about localism and what takes 

place. And this hearing, Mr. Chairman, I think is crucial. And the 

public interest obligation of broadcasters have been clear over the 

years. But, as I reviewed the materials to prepare for this hearing, 

it appears equally clear that the obligations are not being met. 

According to recent studies, the average American now spends 24 

minutes a day reading, over 3 hours a day listening to the radio, 

and over 4 hours a day watching television. Fewer than one half 

of all U.S. households read the daily newspaper. People rely on TV 

and radio to find out what’s going on. Children spend a bit more 

time reading, 44 minutes, and that’s because they have to do their 

homework. But that, too, pales in comparison with the 6 hours they 

spend each day with electronic media. 

So the broadcasters have our attention, and because the government grants them a license to use part of a public resource, the airwaves, they’re supposed to operate as a public trustee. But it appears that fewer and fewer broadcasters are operating as a public 

trustee, and the FCC is giving them a free pass. 

We’re going to hear testimony today that programming diversity 

is on the decline. We’ll hear that local news is often being produced, as Senator Dorgan mentioned, at a remote location, but the 

local audience isn’t being told that. We’re going to hear that the 

number of hours of educational programming for children is dropping, especially at stations that are part of media duopolies. And 

we’re going to hear that local TV coverage of public-policy issues 

7 

and politics is becoming nonexistent at the same time that stations 

are taking in a billion dollars in potential advertising revenue. 

As dependent as we are on running these ads, I doubt that anyone here would suggest that they are a substitute for civic debate. 

Our democracy, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, depends on a 

well-informed electorate. If we’re going to rely on TV and radio to 

be informed, the trends that I’ve just mentioned are truly worrisome. 

And I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about whether 

and how these trends might be reversed. 

And, Mr. Chairman, before I close, I note the long service of my 

colleagues on the left here, and I’m here five, six months, and it’s 

really interesting, I can tell you, what takes place. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Lautenberg. 

Our first witness is the Honorable Michael Copps, Commissioner 

of the Federal Communications Commission. I would note that we 

invited Republicans members, appointed members, of the Commission to testify today. All declined to do so. 

Welcome, Commissioner Copps, and we—I note you have a very 

long statement. I hope you’ll summarize, so we’ll have time for 

questions, as well as an additional panel. 

Welcome, Commissioner Copps. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL COPPS, COMMISSIONER, 

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION 

Dr. COPPS. I will. 

Mr. Chairman, Senator Hollings, Senator Dorgan, Senator Lautenberg, as always I am honored to come home to the Senate. I’m 

particularly indebted to Chairman McCain and Senator Hollings 

for holding this hearing on a subject that too often doesn’t get the 

attention it deserves. 

My time is short. I don’t think you’ve invited me here to deliver 

a history lecture or a philosophical discourse on the public interest, 

so I will just reaffirm, at the outset, the promise that I made to 

you when I first came up here and appeared before this Committee, 

that I would make the public interest the centerpiece of my commitment as a Commissioner. 

The public interest is important, not just because I find it personally appealing, and I do, but because it’s the cornerstone of the 

law of the land. As you so rightly noted, Mr. Chairman, the term 

‘‘public interest’’ appears over 100 times in the communications 

law. I take Congress seriously when they tell me something once. 

When they tell me 112 times, I stand at attention. 

Where does the Commission go from here? If the structural bars 

to media consolidation are going to come down, we need to ask, 

‘‘What’s left to protect the public interest?’’ I have some suggestions. I’m going to be asking my colleagues at the Commission to 

consider the following six things. 

First, we need an effective license renewal process. As national 

conglomerates gobble up local stations, we need, more than ever, 

a process to ensure that licensees still serve the public interest, 

still serve their local communities. An honest to God and properly 

designed license renewal process would avoid micromanagement in 

8 

favor of a comprehensive look at how a station has discharged its 

public responsibilities over the term of its license. 

This process should include going out and hearing from members 

of the community. That hasn’t happened for years. As we begin the 

next round of license renewals for radio this fall, and for television 

in 2004, I intend to hold a series of town meetings in regions where 

renewals are due, in order to hear from communities how their airwaves are being used. How can we know if licensees are serving 

their local communities without hearing from the local community? 

I hope my colleagues will join me in this outreach effort. At a minimum, I hope that I will receive support, in terms of funding and 

staff, so that we can make these town meetings maximally productive. 

Second, we need what I call ‘‘community discovery.’’ I believe the 

public interest would profit immeasurably by some meaningful but 

user-friendly successor to the old ascertainment process. We need 

absentee license holders to understand the needs of the communities they serve. Let’s get Clear Channel and other large station 

owners out among the people in the communities where they own 

stations. As media conglomerates grow ever bigger and control 

moves farther away from the local community, doesn’t it make 

sense to require, as a condition of renewal or of new acquisitions, 

that the owners come to town and visit with their listeners and try 

to gauge their interest in what kind of programming they should 

be producing? 

Third, we must, at long last, move against indecency on the airwaves. Every day, I hear from parents who are fed up with the patently offensive programming coming their way so much of the time. 

I have referred in the past to a race to the bottom. I’m beginning 

to wonder if there even is a bottom. 

We need a number of public interest actions here. I will propose 

a proceeding to consider whether there is a link between increasing 

consolidation, on the one hand, and increasing indecency in our airwaves, on the other, and steps we should take to address any such 

problems. The Commission utterly failed to analyze this issue before its recent vote. That was an abdication of its responsibility. We 

voted without understanding how consolidation was going to affect 

our kids. 

The Commission also needs to do a far better job of enforcing the 

laws against indecency on our airwaves. The process by which the 

Commission enforces these laws has long put inordinate responsibility on the complaining listener. That’s wrong. It’s the Commission’s responsibility to investigate complaints. 

I also believe, as I suggested in the recent WKRK–FM case, that 

we need to send some of these more outrageous transgressions to 

administrative hearing for license revocation. Taking some blatant 

offender’s license away would let everyone know that the FCC has, 

at long last, gotten serious. 

Also on indecency, I have long suggested, without much success, 

that broadcasters voluntarily tackle the issue of indecent programming. I’d like to see my friends, Eddie Fritts, of the NAB, and Robert Sachs, of the NCTA, convene a TV summit to tackle the issue 

of protecting our kids from broadcast indecency. And you know 

what? A lot of their members agree with me. 

9 

It’s also time for us to step up to the plate and tackle the wanton 

violence our kids are served up every day. Compelling arguments 

have been made that excessive violence is every bit as profane, indecent, and obscene as anything else that’s broadcast. 

I don’t know the precise mix of legislative initiative and regulatory enforcement and voluntary industry action that we need 

here, but millions of Americans are asking us to get on the job. I’m 

pleased that this Committee is on the job. I hope your Commission 

will get on the job soon. 

Fourth, we need to do more to encourage minority and female 

participation in our media. I question how we can have viewpoint 

diversity without ownership diversity, yet the minority ownership 

figures are all heading in the wrong direction, arguably as a result 

of consolidation. Again, we should have acted before we voted. 

In any event, this has to go on the front burner right away. I 

know that Chairman McCain, all the other Members here today, 

have tremendous interest in this issue, and I commend them for it. 

We must never forget that America’s strength, after all, is its diversity, and our media have an obligation to reflect that diversity and 

to nourish the diversity. 

Fifth, the Commission should forthwith address the issue of DTV 

public interest obligations. I see the light’s on there. I’ll just say 

this matter was teed up long, long ago. It’s laying fallow at the 

Commission. We need to get those proceedings that are latent settled so that broadcasters know what public interest obligations are 

expected of them, and the American people know what public interest obligations those broadcasters will be performing. 

Sixth, and finally, I believe that we must confront the substantial reduction in independent programming. Now that we’re further 

loosening the concentration limits horizontally, we should address 

whether there’s a need for more independent programming to ensure that we do not end up with nationally vertically integrated 

conglomerates that control not only the distribution, but the content, too. 

So I present these proposals in hopes that we can build on the 

dialogue that has begun with media ownership. There are no doubt 

many other ideas that you will have that we could be pursuing, but 

let us begin, at least. In the past months, we have seen the media 

issues steam-rolling across this country, a grassroots issue like we 

haven’t seen in many years. More than two million Americans have 

registered their views with the Commission now. 

The right, the left, Republicans, Democrats, concerned parents, 

creative artists, religious leaders, civil rights activists, and labor organizations have united to fight together on this issue. The American people want action. I look forward to working with you, Mr. 

Chairman, and Members of this distinguished Committee, to try to 

deliver some action to them. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Commissioner Copps follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL J. COPPS, COMMISSIONER, 

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

Mr. Chairman, Senator Hollings, Members of the Committee, I am honored to be 

here this morning and I am doubly indebted to Chairman McCain and Senator HolVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
10 

lings, first for holding this hearing on a subject that doesn’t often get the attention 

it deserves and second, for inviting me to share some of my perspectives on this critical issue, and more importantly, to hear yours. 

My time is short and I don’t think you invited me to deliver a history lecture on 

the evolution of the public interest concept or to ramble on about its philosophical 

underpinnings. So, I’ll just reaffirm the promise I made to you when I first appeared 

before this Committee that I would make the public interest the centerpiece of my 

commitment as a Commissioner. The public interest is important not just because 

I find it personally appealing—which I do—but because it’s the cornerstone of the 

law of the land. My staff and I did a quick count and found that the term ‘‘public 

interest’’ appears approximately 112 times in the Communications Act. I take Congress seriously when it tells me something once. When it tells me 112 times, I stand 

at attention. 

I don’t buy, and I never understood, the argument that the public interest is an 

empty vessel. We need look no further than the core principles of the Communications Act to find the oxygen that breathes life and substance into the public interest. 

For example, in telecommunications, Congress told us to promote consumer choice 

through competition and to ensure universal service so that all Americans have access to the communications networks. When it comes to media, communications law 

means localism, diversity and competition. 

The statute further tells us that the airwaves belong to the American people. No 

broadcast station, no company, no single individual owns an airwave in America; 

the airwaves belong to all the people. Corporations are given a temporary right to 

use this public asset and even to profit from that use. In return, we direct these 

corporations to act as public trustees and to serve the public interest. 

As Members of this Committee know, I am deeply troubled at the direction of the 

Commission’s vote on June 2 to loosen the media ownership rules and caps. I had 

the opportunity to detail my objections on both the substance and the process of 

that decision when I appeared before this Committee on June 4. As that decision 

approached, I saw two divergent paths. Down one road was a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to local control of our media, diversity in news and editorial viewpoint, and the importance of competition. This path beckoned us to update our rules 

to account for technological and marketplace changes, yes, but without abandoning 

core values going to the heart of what the media mean in our country. On this path 

we would also reaffirm that FCC licensees have been given very special privileges 

and that they have very special responsibilities to serve the public interest. 

Down the other path was more media control by ever fewer corporate giants. This 

path would surrender awesome powers over our news, information and entertainment to a handful of large conglomerates. Here we would treat the media like any 

other big business, trusting that in the unforgiving environment of the market, the 

public interest will somehow magically trump the urge to build private power and 

private profit for a privileged few. On this path we would endanger time-tested safeguards and time-honored values that have strengthened the country as well as the 

media. 

I believe that with the June 2 vote, the majority of the Commission took the latter—and in my mind, the wrong—road. The decision allows the giant media companies to exert massive influence over some communities by wielding up to three TV 

stations, eight radio stations, the already monopolistic newspaper, and potentially 

the cable system. It allows each television network to buy up even more local TV 

stations to cover 45 percent of the national television audience—and if you throw 

in the UHF discount, potentially up to 90 percent. Newspaper-broadcast cross ownership is henceforth apparently acceptable in 179 of 210 markets, and duopoly gets 

the green light in up to 162 of them. One broadcaster who is trying to figure out 

exactly what our new rules mean has told me that his preliminary numbers indicate 

that a single company could own up to 370 stations in 208 of the 210 markets in 

this country. The impact is even more dramatic when considered on a state-by-state 

basis. For example, in Texas, one company could own 33 television stations, the 

major paper in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso, plus numerous radio stations. That company might also own cable systems and cable channels and perhaps 

be the dominant Internet provider, too. Where are the blessings of localism, diversity and competition here? I see centralization, not localism; I see uniformity, not diversity; I see monopoly and oligopoly, not competition. 

Rather than spending my few minutes this morning further going over my objections to both the substance and process of the decision or the events leading up to 

the media concentration vote, I would like to talk about where we go from here. This 

Committee, other Members of the Senate, and now the House of Representatives are 

actively involved in deliberations over the June 2 decision, and I will be following 

11 

what happens here with great interest. And hope. The courts will also no doubt be 

involved. 

These ownership limits were about the last safeguards remaining against the rising tide of media concentration. This is only the latest, although perhaps most radical, step in a twenty-year history of weakening public interest protections. Step by 

step, rule by rule, we have allowed the dismantling of these protections and flashed 

a bright green light to the forces of consolidation. The Commission has allowed fundamental protections of the public interest to wither and die, relying instead on private profit as a proxy for the public interest. Requirements that we once had like 

ascertaining the needs of the local audience, requiring a rigorous license renewal 

process, providing demonstrated diversity in programming and the teeing up of controversial issues have gone by the boards. Relics, seemingly, of a distant past. 

The Commission had also cut back and then eliminated important structural regulations that limited both horizontal (or distributional) concentration and vertical 

(or production) concentration, so that the same network distributing programs increasingly owned them. Nowadays, content and distribution increasingly report to 

the same master. On top of all this, we come now on June 2 and further weaken 

the horizontal caps, unleashing what many experts expect to be a great ‘‘Gold Rush’’ 

of swaps, mergers, and acquisitions. ‘‘Corporate Cupid,’’ one fund manager called it 

during the high-powered meeting of media moguls in Sun Valley the other day. 

‘‘Big-lovemaking, big deals out of this thing. You are going to see a lot,’’ he said. 

Well, I don’t mind brokers being brokers—that’s what they’re supposed to do. But 

I do wonder who is supposed to be America’s broker in all this. Somehow I had the 

idea, maybe a little quaint since June 2, that the FCC had a role in all this. But 

we punted, and now I think a lot of it is up to you ladies and gentlemen of the Congress. 

So, the question is, where does the Commission go from here? If we are going to 

take down the structural bars to media consolidation, then we’d better try to put 

some vitality back into the public interest. I am totally convinced this needs to happen. Accordingly, I will be asking my colleagues at the Commission to consider the 

following: 

1. An Effective License Renewal Process: As more national conglomerates gobble 

up local stations, we need a process to ensure that licensees are serving their 

local communities. As one part of this effort, we should establish an effective 

license renewal process under which the Commission would once again actually 

consider the manner in which a station has served the public interest when 

it comes time to renew its license. The Commission formerly did that. But the 

system has degenerated into one of basically post-card license renewal. Unless 

there is a major complaint pending against a station, its license is almost automatically renewed. A real, honest-to-goodness and properly-designed license renewal process, predicated on advancing the public interest, would avoid micromanagement on a day-to-day basis in favor of a comprehensive look at how a 

station has discharged its public responsibilities over the term of its license. 

As part of the license renewal process, I believe it is important to go out and 

hear from members of the community. But that hasn’t happened for years. It’s 

time for that to change. As we begin the next round of license renewals for 

radio this fall and for television in 2004, I intend to hold a series of town meetings in regions where renewals are due in order to hear from communities how 

their airwaves are being used. How can we know if licensees are serving their 

local communities without hearing from the local community? I intend to get 

outside the Beltway to listen and to learn. 

I hope my colleagues will join me in this outreach effort. At a minimum, I hope 

that I will receive support in terms of staff and funding so that we can make 

these town meetings maximally productive. 

2. Community Discovery: The Commission should not be the only listening to the 

people. Let’s get Clear Channel and other large station owners out among the 

people in the communities where they own stations. I believe the public interest would profit immeasurably with some meaningful, but user-friendly, successor to the old ascertainment process. As media conglomerates grow ever bigger and control moves further away from the local community, doesn’t it make 

sense to require, as a condition of renewal or new acquisitions, that the owners 

come to town and visit with their listeners and viewers to learn about the problems, needs, and issues facing the local community, and understand what the 

people there really want to see and hear in their programming? An occasional 

visit to town by absentee station owners is not what I would call localism at 

its best, but at least it’s something. And the owners would then tell the Commission if and how they followed through. 

12 

3. Eliminate Indecency on the Airwaves: Every day I hear from Americans who 

are fed up with the patently offensive programming coming their way so much 

of the time. I hear from parents frustrated with the lack of choices available 

for their children. I even hear from many broadcast station owners that something needs to be done about the quality of some of the programming they are 

running. I’ve referred to a ‘‘race to the bottom,’’ but I’m beginning to wonder 

if there even is a bottom to it. How does this serve the public interest? 

We need a number of actions here. 

First, I will propose a proceeding to consider whether there is a link between 

increasing consolidation and increasing indecency on our airwaves and steps 

we should take to address any such problems. In its recent decision, the Commission failed to analyze this issue. Has consolidation led to an increase in the 

amount of indecent programming? Intuitively, it makes sense, but I don’t pretend to know whether there is a causal effect or a correlation or what. When 

programming decisions are made on Wall Street or Madison Avenue, rather 

than closer to the community, do indecency and excessive violence grow more 

pervasive? We need to know the answer to this question. I believe we had no 

business voting on June 2 without having visited this matter and amassing at 

least a halfway credible record as to whether all this media concentration has 

concentrated a lot of smut on our kids. We owe it to our children, and their 

parents, to explore this question before voting on whether to allow more consolidation. 

Second, the Commission needs to do a far better job of enforcing the laws 

against indecency on our airwaves. The process by which the FCC has enforced 

these laws has long placed inordinate responsibility upon the complaining citizen. That’s just wrong. It is the Commission’s responsibility to investigate 

complaints that the law has been violated, not the citizen’s responsibility to 

prove the violations. 

I also believe, as I suggested in the recent WKRK–FM case, that we need to 

send some of the more outrageous transgressions to administrative hearing for 

license revocation. Taking some blatant offender’s license away would let everyone know that the FCC had finally gotten serious about its responsibilities, 

and I think we would see an almost instantaneous slamming on of the brakes 

in the race to the bottom. 

Third, I have long suggested, without much success, that broadcasters voluntarily tackle the issue of indecent programming. Many of you will remember 

the Voluntary Code of Broadcaster Conduct that for years and years saw the 

industry practicing some self-discipline in the presentation of sex, alcohol, drug 

addiction and much else. It didn’t work perfectly, but at least it was a serious 

effort premised on the idea that we can be well-entertained without descending 

into that race for the bottom. I’d like to see my friends Eddie Fritts of the National Association of Broadcasters and Robert Sachs of the National Cable and 

Telecommunications Association convene a TV summit to tackle the issue. And 

you know what? A lot of their members agree. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would 

certainly be welcomed by the American people. 

It is also time for us to step up to the plate and tackle the wanton violence 

our kids are served up every day. Compelling arguments have been made that 

excessive violence is every bit as indecent, profane and obscene as anything 

else that is broadcast. Over the years, dozens of studies have documented that 

excessive violence has hugely detrimental effects, particularly on young people. 

I don’t say this is a simple problem to resolve, because it is not. I do say the 

issue has gone unaddressed for too long. 

I don’t know what the precise mix of legislative initiative, regulatory enforcement and voluntary industry action should be here, but millions of Americans 

are asking us to get on the job, and I am pleased that this Committee is on 

the job. Today we have the best of television and undeniably the worst. When 

it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is horrid. It’s not what 

the pioneers of the great broadcast industry had in mind when they brought 

radio and television to us. 

4. Minority and Female Participation: The Commission in the recent media ownership decision promised to initiate a proceeding to increase the participation 

of minorities and women in our media. I was troubled that in reaching that 

decision, the Commission did not even attempt to understand what further consolidation means in terms of providing Hispanic Americans and African Americans and Asian-Pacific Americans and Native Americans and women and other 

groups the kinds of programs and access and viewpoint diversity and ownerVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
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ship and career opportunities and even advertising information about products 

and services that they need. But the Commission moved forward notwithstanding my objection. Now that the vote has taken place, we must undertake 

and expeditiously complete a proceeding to increase opportunities for minorities and women. I know that Chairman McCain and other Members of this 

Committee have tremendous interest in this issue and I commend them for it. 

We must never forget that America’s strength is, after all, its diversity. America will succeed in the twenty-first century not in spite of our diversity, but 

because of our diversity. Diversity is not a problem to be overcome. It is our 

greatest strength. And our media need to reflect this diversity and to nourish 

it. 

5. DTV Public Interest: Thanks to this Committee and its counterpart in the 

House, the transition to digital television has advanced on many fronts. And 

Congress made it clear that the public interest obligations of broadcasters 

would continue in the new digital world. But the FCC has not followed up on 

its responsibility to update its rules for those who are given the right to use 

spectrum for digital television. We have just recently managed to get a couple 

of proceedings, now more than three years old, dusted off and put out for further comment. We need to push these to conclusion and take a good, broad look 

at this so (1) the American people will know how digital TV will serve their 

interests and (2) broadcasters will know and understand the rules of the road. 

6. Independent Programming: I will also propose a proceeding to examine independent programming on our airwaves. Numerous commenters urged us to include this in the recent ownership proceeding but the majority felt it didn’t belong there. I disagreed. But now that we are further loosening the concentration limits, we should address whether there is a need for independent programming requirements to ensure that we do not end up with national 

vertically integrated conglomerates that control the distribution channels and 

all the content we see and hear. Network ownership of the full range of prime 

time programming constrains competition, consigns independent production to 

oblivion or, at best, minor and marginal roles, cripples the production of diverse programming, and also entails widespread job losses for workers, including creative artists, technicians and many, many others. 

Members of this distinguished Committee, I present these proposals in the hope 

that we can build on the dialogue that has begun with media ownership. In the past 

months, we have seen this issue steamrolling across this country—a grassroots issue 

like we haven’t seen in many years and one that developed without the FCC doing 

its part to spark it or Big Media doing its part to cover it at all adequately. 

More than two million Americans have registered their views with the Commission now—more than for any proceeding in our history. In these times when many 

issues divide us, citizens from right to left, Republicans and Democrats, concerned 

parents and creative artists, religious leaders, civil rights activists, and labor organizations have united to fight together on this issue. I believe the American people 

want action on how their airwaves will be used. Who is going to control the media? 

How many—or, rather, how few—companies? How do we protect local broadcasting, 

diversity of programming and opinion, and the ability of local broadcasters to compete with the huge companies? 

I read some inspiring words the other night from a former President who I think 

understood radio, back when radio pretty much was all of broadcasting. The spectrum is, he said, ‘‘a public medium and its use must be for public benefit. The use 

of a radio channel is justified only if there is public benefit. The dominant element 

for consideration in the radio field is, and always will be, the great body of the listening public, millions in number, countrywide in distribution.’’ That wasn’t my 

hero, FDR, but his Republican predecessor, Herbert Hoover, serving as Secretary of 

Commerce in 1925. Those words ring now truer than ever. I don’t know who your 

heroes are, Members of the Committee, but I do believe that working together, in 

bipartisan fashion, we can once again propel the liberating spirit of the public interest to the forefront of our great country’s media. 

Thank you very much for this opportunity and I am anxious to hear your further 

thoughts and to try to answer any questions that you may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Panel Number 2 is Mr. Corn-Revere, Partner, of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Mr. Barry M. Faber, Vice 

President and General Counsel, Sinclair Broadcasting Group;, Mr. 

Dave Davis, the General Manager of WPVI–DT; Dean Martin 

Kaplan, Associate Dean and School Director, University of SouthVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
14 

ern California, Annenberg School for Communication; and Mr. L. 

Brent Bozell, President of Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and the Conservative Communications Center. Welcome to the witnesses, and Mr. Corn-Revere, we will begin with 

you. Thank you, and welcome. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT CORN-REVERE, PARTNER, 

DAVIS WRIGHT TREMAINE, LLP 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the 

Committee. I appreciate your inviting me to testify about public interest obligations of local broadcasters and the role the broadcasters play in the delivery of local news and public affairs programming. 

The CHAIRMAN. Could you pull the microphone a little closer, 

please. Thank you. 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. Specifically, I have been asked to focus my 

testimony on the history and constitutionality of the broadcast public interest standard as it applies to programming mandates. Accordingly, my written testimony concentrates on that history in 

general and its relationship to First Amendment concerns. Before 

I begin, I want to just stress that this testimony represents my personal views and should not be attributed to any clients or any 

other parties. 

As has already been expressed this morning, the public interest 

standard is the touchstone of authority for the Federal Communications Commission. The standard was first adopted as part of 

the Radio Act of 1927, which created the Federal Radio Commission. It was perpetuated by the Communications Act of 1934, when 

Congress consolidated the communications regulatory functions 

with the FCC. 

The Communications Act uses many different formulations of the 

public interest language in various sections of the law, and I guess, 

as has again been mentioned earlier, occurs some 100 times in the 

act. Like the Radio Act before it, the Communications Act does not 

define these terms. I believe Senator Hollings mentioned that 

Chairman Powell has said that the standard is vague. 

He’s not the only FCC Commissioner who has expressed that 

thought. Former FCC Commissioner Glenn O. Robinson has noted 

the frequent criticism that the public interest standard is vague to 

the point of vacuousness, providing neither guidance nor constraint 

on the agency’s action. He added that what the act itself does not 

define, the legislative history does not illuminate. Many other Commissioners have made the same point over the years, including 

former Chairman Newton Minow. 

Before starting law school, I received a master’s degree focusing 

on broadcast history and regulation, and during my studies I recall 

one enterprising graduate student saying that he was going to finally determine the meaning of the public interest standard in the 

Communications Act, and he proposed to do that by programming 

every FCC decision ever made into a program that he was devising, 

and he would use that process to determine what the public interest meant. 

15 

Now, little did he know that the public interest appears in every 

FCC decision. It rarely means the same thing twice in any two decisions. I really don’t know whatever became of that project. 

The very general mandate of the Communications Act has a special application when it comes to the regulation of broadcast programming. There is an inherent tension in the FCC’s mandate to 

regulate in the public interest and the First Amendment command 

that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or 

the press. Among other places, this tension is recognized in section 

326 of the act, which prohibits censorship and expressly withholds 

from Government the power to interfere with the right of free 

speech by means of radio communications. 

Based on this dual obligation, the Supreme Court has stressed 

that the First Amendment must inform and give shape to the manner in which Congress exercises its regulatory power in this area. 

It is said that the FCC must walk a tightrope to preserve the First 

Amendment values written into the Communications Act and has 

described this as a task of great delicacy and difficulty. 

That being said, the FCC historically has directly exercised 

greater supervision of broadcast content than would be permitted 

in other media, and the Supreme Court in the past has approved 

this regulation, although with some notable exceptions. The Commission has moderated the inherent tensions in this arrangement 

by showing a certain degree of restraint and sensitivity to competing values at stake. 

In 1960, the FCC emphasized that in considering the extent of 

the Commission’s authority in the area of programming, it is essential for us to examine the limitations imposed upon it by the First 

Amendment to the Constitution and section 326 of the Communications Act. 

After an extensive analysis of the meaning of the public interest, 

the FCC found that the required constitutional and statutory balance barred the Government from implementing programming requirements that were too specific. In response to proposals to require licensees to present specific types of programs on the theory 

that such action would enhance freedom of expression, rather than 

to abridge it, the commission explained that the First Amendment 

forbids governmental interference asserted in aid of free speech, as 

well as governmental action repressive of it. 

The protection against abridgement of freedom of speech in the 

press flatly forbids governmental interference, benign or otherwise. 

In the past, the Commission has relied upon processing guidelines, 

rather than programming mandates, to reach this kind of balance. 

Whether or not Congress or the FCC at the present time could constitutionally adopt more detailed requirements under the public interest standard is not an easy question to answer. 

To begin with, it’s difficult to assess the constitutionality of content regulations in the absence of a concrete proposal. Although the 

prevailing standard for broadcast regulation articulated in Red 

Lion has permitted the Government to regulate broadcast content 

more intensively than other media in the past, the courts have 

never defined just how far this power might extend. Additionally, 

it has been 34 years since the Supreme Court decided Red Lion, 

a case that it said was based on the state of commercially acceptVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
16 

1This testimony represents my personal views and should not be attributed to any clients or 

other parties. 2My testimony draws heavily from Chapter 14 of Zuckman, Corn-Revere, Frieden and Kennedy, MODERN COMMUNICATIONS LAW (West Group 1999 & Supp.). In addition, I have attached 

two more recent articles: Avast Ye Wasteland: Reflections on America’s Most Famous Exercise 

in ‘‘ ‘Public Interest’ Piracy,’’ FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL 481 (May 2003) and The 

Public Interest, the First Amendment and a Horse’s Ass, 2000 MICH. ST.-DETROIT COLL. L. REV. 165 (Spring 2000). 3FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U.S. 134 (1940). 4See Philip T. Rosen, THE MODERN STENTORS: RADIO BROADCASTING AND THE FEDERAL GOV- ERNMENT 106 (Greenwood Press 1980). 5 E.g., Great Lakes Broadcasting Co., F.R.C. Ann. Rep. 32 (1929), affd in part and rev ’d in 

part Great Lakes Broadcasting v. FRC, 37 F.2d 993, 59 App. D.C. 195 (D.C.Cir.), cert. dismissed, 

281 U.S. 706, 50 S.Ct. 467, 74 L.Ed. 1129 (1930). The Great Lakes decision established programming service as one of the public interest criteria governing radio station renewal. See generally 

Robert Corn-Revere, Economics and Media Regulation, in MEDIA ECONOMICS THEORY AND PRACTICE 71–90 (Alexander, Owers & Carveth, eds, 1993). 6 41 Stat 456 (1920), codified at 49 U.S.C. § 10901. For a general discussion see Glen 0. Robinson, The Federal Communications Act: An Essay on Origins and Regulatory Purpose in A LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934 (Max Paglin, ed. 1989) pp. 3–24. 

able technology as of 1969. Since then, both Congress and the FCC 

have found that the media marketplace has undergone vast 

changes. For example, the legislative history of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 suggested that the historical justifications for 

the FCC’s regulation of broadcasting required reconsideration. 

Given these changes, and in light of evolving case law, which is 

described in more detail in my written testimony, it is far from 

clear how new programming requirements would be evaluated by 

reviewing courts. 

Thank you, and I would be happy to answer any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Corn-Revere follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ROBERT CORN-REVERE, PARTNER, 

DAVIS WRIGHT TREMAINE LLP 

Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify about the public interest obligations of local broadcasters and the role of broadcasters in the delivery of local news and public affairs programming.1 Specifically, 

I have been asked to focus my testimony on the history and constitutionality of the 

broadcast public interest standard as it applies to programming mandates. Accordingly, my written testimony concentrates on the history of the FCC’s public interest 

standard and its relationship to First Amendment concerns.2

Broadcast Regulation and the Public Interest 

A. The Elusive Public Interest Standard 

The public interest standard is the ‘‘touchstone of authority’’ for the Federal Communications Commission (‘‘FCC’’).3 The standard was first adopted as part of the 

Radio Act of 1927, which created the Federal Radio Commission (‘‘FRC’’). Recognizing the importance of the new medium of communications, the Washington Post 

described the Radio Act as the ‘‘most important legislation of the session.’’ 4 The Act 

directed the FRC to perform various tasks, including classifying radio stations, describing the type of service to be provided, assigning frequencies, making rules to 

prevent interference, establishing the power and location of transmitters and establishing coverage areas in a way that maximized the public good. But this did not 

address the larger question of what constitutes ‘‘the public good.’’ The FRC took the 

position that the Supreme Court eventually would define the public interest case by 

case. Nevertheless, it outlined the primary attributes of the public interest in its 

policy statements and licensing decisions.5

Congress borrowed the expression ‘‘public interest, convenience or necessity’’ from 

the field of railroad regulation, and its use in the context of radio regulation was 

almost accidental. The terms had been used previously in the Transportation Act 

of 1920.6 Senator Clarence C. Dill, who drafted the Communications Act, later recounted that ‘‘[a] young man on the Committee staff had worked at the Interstate 

Commerce Committee for several years . . . and he said, ’Well, how about ‘‘public 

17 

7 Newton N. Minow and Craig L. LaMay, ABANDONED IN THE WASTELAND 4 (Hill and Wang: 

New York 1995). 8 Henry Friendly, THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATIVE AGENCIES 54–55 (Harvard University Press 

1962). See also Robinson, note 6 supra at pp. 14–16. 9See, e.g., 47 U.S.C. §§ 201(b), 215(a), 319(c) and 315(a) (‘‘public interest’’); §§ 214(a) and 214(c) 

(‘‘public convenience and necessity’’); § 214(d) (‘‘interest of public convenience and necessity’’); 

§§ 307(c), 309(a) and 319(d) (‘‘public interest, convenience and necessity’’); § 307(a) (‘‘public convenience, interest or necessity’’); §§ 311(b) and 311(c)(3) (‘‘public interest, convenience or necessity’’). 10Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ v. FCC, 707 F.2d 1413, 1429, 

(D.C.Cir. 1983) (‘‘the [Communications] Act provides virtually no specifics as to the nature of 

those public obligations inherent in the public interest standard’’). Despite the lack of a categorical definition of the public interest, various provisions of the Act operationally define at least 

part of what Congress intended. For example, the Act directs the FCC to provide, to the extent 

possible, rapid and efficient communication service, adequate facilities at reasonable charges, 

provision for national defense and safety of lives and property, and a fair, efficient and equitable 

distribution of radio service to each of the states and communities. 11Louis Caldwell, The Standard of Public Interest, Convenience or Necessity as Used in the 

Radio Act of 1927, 1 AIR LAW REV. 291, 295 (1930). 12 Robinson, supra note 6 at 14. 13Minow and LaMay, supra note 7 at 5. 14 Erwin G. Krasnow, and Jack Goodman, The ‘‘Public Interest’’ Standard: The Elusive Search 

for the Holy Grail, 50 FED. COMM.L.J. 606, 606 (1998). 15 Newton N. Minow, EQUAL TIME, THE PRIVATE BROADCASTER AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST 4 

(New York: Athenaeum 1964). 16 Ayn Rand, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL 121–122 (New American Library 1966) (‘‘the 

‘public interest’ . . . amounted to a blank check on totalitarian power over the broadcasting industry, granted to whatever bureaucrats happened to be appointed to the Commission’’). 17 Newton N. Minow, Commemorative Messages, in A LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934 (Max Paglin, ed. 1989) at p. xvi. 

interest, convenience and necessity’’? That’s what we used there.’ That sounded 

pretty good, so we decided we would use it, too.’’ 7

By shifting the context of the regulatory mandate from railroads to radio, however, its meaning became less certain. Judge Henry Friendly wrote in his classic 

study The Federal Administrative Agencies that the use of the ‘‘public convenience 

and necessity’’ standard ‘‘conveyed a fair degree of meaning’’ in the Transportation 

Act ‘‘when the issue was whether new or duplicating railroad construction should 

be authorized or an existing line abandoned.’’ However, the standard ‘‘was almost 

drained of meaning’’ in the context of radio regulation ‘‘where the issue was almost 

never the need for broadcasting service but rather who should render it.’’ 8

The Communications Act of 1934 uses various formulations of the ‘‘public interest’’ language,9 and like the Radio Act before it, does not define the terms.10 The 

absence of specific statutory direction has been a distinguishing characteristic of 

communications regulation. As one contemporary observer wrote regarding the 

standard as employed in the Radio Act, ‘‘[p]ublic interest, convenience or necessity’ 

means about as little as any phrase that the drafters of the Act could have used. 

. . .’’ 11 The Communications Act did not improve the situation. Professor of law 

(and former FCC Commissioner) Glen 0. Robinson has noted the frequent criticism 

that the public interest standard ‘‘is vague to the point of vacuousness, providing 

neither guidance nor constraint on the agency’s action,’’ adding that ‘‘[w]hat the Act 

itself does not define, the legislative history does not illuminate.’’ 12

Accordingly, ‘‘[b]ecause the act did not define what the public interest meant,’’ 

former FCC Chairman Newton Minow has written, ‘‘Congress, the courts, and the 

FCC have spent sixty frustrating years struggling to figure it out.’’ 13 Two prominent 

communications lawyers have suggested that ‘‘[p]erhaps no single area of communications policy has generated as much scholarly discourse, judicial analysis, and 

political debate over the course of the last 70 years as has that simple directive to 

regulate in ‘‘the public interest.’’ 14 It has also generated conflict. Since broadcast 

regulation began, the meaning of the public interest has been the focal point for the 

clash of values at the FCC, and at the FRC before it.15

But there is another eye-of-the-beholder problem embedded in this regulatory puzzle. Not only does the public interest standard provide scant guidance for selecting 

among particular policy options in a given instance, there is robust debate as to 

whether it is a ‘‘good’’ standard. At one end of the spectrum, it has been described 

as the ‘‘intellectual knife of collectivism’s sacrificial guillotine.’’ 16 At the other, it has 

been said that all of the FCC’s actions would be ‘‘without meaning’’ in the absence 

of the public interest standard.17 As a consequence, the FCC has been ‘‘a storm cenVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
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18 J Roger Wollenberg, The FCC as Arbiter of ‘‘The Public Interest, Convenience, and Necessity,’’ in A LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934 (Max Paglin, ed. 1989) 

p. 77. 19 Id at 77–78. 20 Ervin Duggan, Congressman Tauzin’s Interesting Idea, BROADCASTING & CABLE, Oct. 20, 

1997 at S18. 21Pinellas Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 230 F.2d 204, 206 (D.C.Cir. 1956), cert, denied, 360 U.S. 

1007 (1956) (‘‘Commissions themselves change, underlying philosophies differ, and experience 

often dictates change. Two diametrically opposite schools of thought in respect to the public welfare may both be rational.’’). 22BS, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94, 122 (1973). See Wollenberg, supra, 

note 18 at 61 (‘‘[I]t seems passing strange that a society traditionally fearful of government 

should have subjected one of its major communications media to sweeping, vaguely defined administrative powers’’). 23 47 U.S.C. § 29 (West 1927); 47 U.S.0 § 326. 24Great Lakes Broadcasting Co., 3 FRC Ann. Rep. 32. 25See KFKB Broadcasting Ass’n v. FRC, 47 F.2d 670, 671 (D.C.Cir. 1931) (self-promoting program the ‘‘Medical Question Box’’ which aired on station licensed to a controversial doctor held 

to violate the public interest); Trinity Methodist Church, South v. FRC, 62 F.2d 850 (D.C.Cir. 

1932), cert. denied, 288 U.S. 599 (1933) (license renewal denied to radio minister who campaigned against corruption and attacked the Catholic Church, Jews, local law enforcement officers and public officials). Compare Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931) (injunction against 

‘‘nuisance publication’’ that attacked local public officials struck down as prior restraint). 26Trinity Methodist Church, South, 62 F.2d at 852. 27 National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 319 U.S. 190, 215–216 (1943). 28 National Ass’n of Regulatory Utility Commissioners v. FCC, 525 F.2d 630, 638 n.37 (D.C.Cir. 

1976). 

ter of criticism from the left and the right.’’ 18 One thing that all can agree on, however, is that the meaning of the ‘‘public interest’’ has changed over time. 

The nature of the public interest has fluctuated in part because of the political 

outlook of those who administer the law. ‘‘At various times in its history the Federal 

Communications Commission has taken a broad view of its power and responsibility 

to further what it deemed to be in the public interest’’ while at others it has promoted ‘‘rapid moves toward deregulation.’’ 19 As former FCC Commissioner Ervin 

Duggan put it, ‘‘successive regimes at the FCC have oscillated wildly between enthusiasm for the public interest standard and distaste for it.’’ 20 While this has led 

some to criticize the FCC for being overly political, Judge E. Barrett Prettyman of 

the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has described it as being ‘‘political in the high sense of that abused term.’’ 21 Still, the inherently political nature of the regulatory mandate creates special tensions since 

‘‘the ‘public interest’ standard necessarily invites reference to First Amendment 

principles.’’ 22

The invitation to apply First Amendment principles, however, has done little to 

clarify the statutory mandate or reduce the Commission’s political mood swings. 

From the beginning, the public interest standard permitted the government to regulate broadcast content to an undefined degree while simultaneously prohibiting censorship. Section 29 of the Radio Act, and Section 326 of the Communications Act, 

specifically prohibited ‘‘giv[ing] the licensing authority the power of censorship over 

the radio communications. . . .’’ 23 At the same time, the FRC promulgated as an 

early statement of policy that programming would be considered in license renewal 

decisions, that stations should meet the ‘‘tastes, needs and desires of substantial 

groups among the listening public’’ as opposed to ‘‘propaganda’’ 24 and that operators 

that failed to meet the Commission’s expectations could lose their licenses.25 The 

Commission and the courts resolved this evident paradox by concluding that the 

‘‘application of the regulatory power of Congress in a field within the scope of its 

legislative authority’’ is not ‘‘a denial of freedom of speech.’’ 26 Similarly, comparing 

the FCC to a ‘‘traffic cop,’’ the Supreme Court decided that the Act ‘‘does not restrict 

the Commission merely to supervision of the traffic. It puts upon the Commission 

the burden of determining the composition of that traffic.’’ 27 What none of the decisions established, however, was how far the cop could go in issuing citations, or 

whether this power would continue forever. 

The meaning of the public interest also varies because of the nature of technology. 

Congress purposefully left the regulatory standard open, with the details to be filled 

in by the FCC over time because radio was a new and complicated technology. The 

FCC’s broad powers were based on the assumption that ‘‘Congress could neither 

foresee nor easily comprehend . . . the highly complex and rapidly expanding nature of communications technology.’’ 28 The Supreme Court described the public interest standard in FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co. as ‘‘a supple instrument for 

19 

29 309 U.S. at 138. 30 47 U.S.C. § 157. 31Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. at 102. 32 319 U.S. at 225. 33 Compare Mayflower Broadcasting Corp. 8 F.C.C. 333 (1941) with Opinion on Editorializing 

by Broadcasters, 13 F.C.C. 1246 (1949). See also Syracuse Peace Council, 2 FCC Rcd. 5043 

(1987), aff’d sub nom. Syracuse Peace Council v. FCC, 867 F.2d 654 (D.C.Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 

493 U.S. 1019 (1990) (fairness doctrine does not serve the public interest); FCC v. League of 

Women Voters of California, 468 U.S. 364 (1984) (ban on editorials by public broadcast stations 

is unconstitutional). 34 E.g., United Broadcasting Co., 10 F.C.C. 515 (1945). 35Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. 94 (broadcasters may not be compelled to provide 

a generalized right of access to discuss controversial issues). 36 395 U.S. 367 (1969). 37League of Women Voters of Cal. v. FCC, 468 U.S. 364, 378 (1984). 38 CBS, Inc. v. FCC, 453 U.S. 367, 395 (1981), (quoting Democratic National Committee, 412 

U.S. at 110). 39 47 U.S.C. § 326. 40 CBS, Inc., 412 U.S. at 121. 41League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. at 378. 

the exercise of discretion’’ that is ‘‘as concrete as the complicated factors for judgment in such a field of delegated authority permit.’’ 29

At various times the underlying focus on technological issues has been made explicit. For example, in 1983 Congress added a new section to the Communications 

Act establishing ‘‘the policy of the United States to encourage the provision of new 

technologies and services to the public.’’ 30 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 also 

placed great emphasis on promoting innovation and technology. Consistent with 

these statutory goals, the Supreme Court has recognized that ‘‘because the broadcast industry is dynamic in terms of technological change[,] solutions adequate a 

decade ago are not necessarily so now, and those acceptable today may well be outmoded 10 years hence.’’ 31 Similarly, it had noted in National Broadcasting Co. v. United States that ‘‘[i]f time and changing circumstances reveal that the ‘public interest’ is not served by application of the regulations, it must be assumed that the 

Commission will act in accordance with its statutory obligations.’’ 32

For all of these reasons, in seeking to apply a general statutory mandate, the 

Commission has revised its substantive public interest requirements over time. In 

1941, for example, the Commission decided that broadcast editorials violated the 

public interest, only to reconsider that policy eight years later.33 Similarly, in 1945 

the Commission withheld renewal of a radio station license until the station agreed 

to sell time for paid editorials to the United Auto Workers.34 Since then, however, 

the Commission determined that licensees cannot be forced to sell time to a particular group. This more current view of the public interest was upheld by the Supreme Court.35

B. Regulation of Broadcast Content 

1. The Public Interest Standard and the First Amendment Tightrope 

Broadcasters historically have been subject to various forms of content regulation 

under the public interest standard of the Communications Act. The Act imposes certain specific requirements, such as those for educational programming as well as 

general public interest mandates that are unlike regulations that may be applied 

to the print media. The Supreme Court upheld this differential level of protection 

because of spectrum scarcity in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC.36 At the same 

time, Congress recognized that broadcasters ‘‘are engaged in a vital and independent form of communicative activity’’ 37 and conferred upon licensees ‘the widest 

journalistic freedom consistent with their public [duties].’ ’’ 38 For example, Section 

326 of the Communications Act prohibits censorship and expressly withholds from 

government the power to ‘‘interfere with the right of free speech by means of radio 

communication.’’ This denies to the FCC ‘‘the power of censorship’’ as well as the 

ability to promulgate any ‘‘regulation or condition’’ that interferes with freedom of 

speech.39 These policies ‘‘were drawn from the First Amendment itself [and] the 

’public interest’ standard necessarily invites reference to First Amendment principles.’’ 40 Consequently, the Supreme Court has stressed that ‘‘the First Amendment must inform and give shape to the manner in which Congress exercises its 

regulatory power in this area.’’ 41

This obvious tension between public interest regulation and traditional First 

Amendment concepts has been blunted somewhat to the extent the FCC approached 

broadcast licensees with a certain degree of sensitivity to the competing values at 

stake. From the beginnings of broadcast regulation, Congress and the FCC (and its 

predecessor agency, the Federal Radio Commission), appeared to approach the busiVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
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42See FCC v. WNCN Listeners Guild, 450 U.S. 582, 597 (1981). 43 Report and Statement of Policy re: Commission En Banc Programming Inquiry, 44 F.C.C. 

2303, 2313 (1960). 44 Id. at 2306. 45 Id. at 2308 (citation omitted). 46 Id. 47 Id quoting Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 307, 60 S.Ct. 900, 906, 84 L.Ed. 1213 

(1940). 48 Id. at 2309. 49 Id. at 2308. 50 Id. at 2313. 51 Id. at 2316. 52Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. at 117; Banzhaf v. FCC, 405 F.2d 1082, 1095 

(D.C.Cir.1968), cert denied sub. nom. Tobacco Institute, Inc. v. FCC, 396 U.S. 342 (1969). 

ness of regulation with the understanding that constitutional limitations might prevent too great a reliance on specific programming mandates. One of the bills submitted prior to passage of the Radio Act of 1927 included a provision that would 

have required stations to comply with programming priorities based on subject matter. However, the provision was eliminated because ‘‘it was considered to border on 

censorship.’’ 42 Similarly, the Federal Radio Commission sought to ‘‘chart a course 

between the need of arriving at a workable concept of the public interest in station 

operation, on the one hand, and the prohibition laid on it by the First Amendment 

to the Constitution of the United States . . . on the other.’’ 43

In 1960 the FCC emphasized that ‘‘[i]n considering the extent of the Commission’s 

authority in the area of programming it is essential [first] to examine the limitations imposed upon it by the First Amendment to the Constitution and Section 326 

of the Communications Act.’’ 44 After an extensive analysis of the meaning of the 

public interest, the FCC found that the required constitutional and statutory balance barred the government from implementing programming requirements that 

were too specific. It noted: 

[S]everal witnesses in this proceeding have advanced persuasive arguments urging us to require licensees to present specific types of programs on the theory 

that such action would enhance freedom of expression rather than to abridge 

it. With respect to this proposition we are constrained to point out that the First 

Amendment forbids governmental interference asserted in aid of free speech, as 

well as governmental action repressive of it. The protection against abridgment 

of freedom of speech and press flatly forbids governmental interference, benign 

or otherwise. The First Amendment while regarding freedom in religion, in 

speech, in printing and in assembling and petitioning the government for redress of grievances as fundamental and precious to all, seeks only to forbid that 

Congress should meddle therein.45

Such considerations led the Commission to conclude that it could not ‘‘condition 

the grant, denial or revocation of a broadcast license upon its own subjective determination of what is or is not a good program.’’ 46 To do so, the Commission concluded, would ‘‘lay a forbidden burden upon the exercise of liberty protected by the 

Constitution.’’ 47 In order to maintain a balance between a free competitive broadcast system, on the one-hand, and the requirements of the public interest standard 

on the other, the Commission found that ‘‘as a practical matter, let alone a legal 

matter, [its role] cannot be one of program dictation or program supervision.’’ 48

Over the years the FCC has attempted to balance the constitutional imperative 

of the First Amendment with the public interest aspirations of the Communications 

Act. It has found that while it may ‘‘inquire of licensees what they have done to 

determine the needs of a community they propose to serve, the Commission may not 

impose upon them its private notions of what the public ought to hear.’’ 49 In particular, public interest ‘‘standards or guidelines should in no sense constitute a rigid 

mold for station performance, nor should they be considered as a Commission formula for broadcasts in the public interest.’’ 50 The Commission emphasized that it 

did ‘‘not intend to guide the licensee along the path of programming.’’ On the contrary, ‘‘the licensee must find his own path with the guidance of those whom his 

signal is to serve.’’ 51

Recognizing this delicate balance, courts have noted that the Commission must 

‘‘walk a tightrope’’ to preserve the First Amendment values written into the Radio 

Act and its successor, the Communications Act.’’ 52 The Supreme Court has described this balancing act as ‘‘a task of great delicacy and difficulty,’’ and stressed 

that ‘‘we would [not] hesitate to invoke the Constitution should we determine that 

the [FCC] has not fulfilled with appropriate sensitivity to the interest of free expresVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
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53Democratic National Committee, 412 U.S. at 102. 54 Id. at 120. 55 Id. 56 512 U.S. 622, 650 (1994) (‘‘Turner I’’) (citation omitted). 57 Banzhaf, 405 F.2d at 1095. 58 Id. at 1096. See also Public Interest Research Group v. FCC, 522 F.2d 1060, 1067 (1st 

Cir.1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 965 (1976) (‘‘[we] have doubts as to the wisdom of mandating 

. . . government intervention in the programming and advertising decisions of private broadcasters’’); Anti-Defamation League of B ’nai B ’rith v. FCC, 403 F.2d 169, 172 (D.C. Cir. 1968) 

(‘‘the First Amendment demands that [the FCC] proceed cautiously [in reviewing programming 

content] and Congress . . . limited the Commission’s power in this area’’). 59 CBS, Inc., 453 U.S. at 387. 60 Id. at 396–397. 61 512 U.S. 622, 650–652. 62 Accuracy in, Media v. FCC, 521 F.2d 288, 296–297 (D.C. Cir. 1975). See also CommunityService Broadcasting of Mid-America v. FCC, 593 F.2d 1102, 1115 (D.C. Cir. 1978) (en banc) 

(FCC and courts have generally eschewed ‘‘program-by-program review’’ schemes because of constitutional dangers). 63 47 C.F.R. §§ 73.3526(e)(11)–(12), 73.3527(e)(8) (2002). 64 Id. 

sion.’’ 53 The Court found that the Communications Act was designed ‘‘to maintain— 

no matter how difficult the task—essentially private broadcast journalism.’’ 54 For 

that reason, licensees are to be held ‘‘only broadly accountable to public interest 

standards.’’ 55 Thus, in Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, the Supreme Court 

quoted the 1960 En Banc Policy Statement, and reiterated that ‘‘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.’ ’’56

Specific program requirements generally are considered the most constitutionally 

suspect among the requirements imposed by broadcasting regulations. The United 

States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has noted that the 

‘‘power to specify material which the public interest requires or forbids to be broadcast . . . carries the seeds of the general authority to censor denied by the Communications Act and the First Amendment alike.’’ 57 Public interest requirements relating to specific program content create a ‘‘high-risk that such rulings will reflect the 

Commission’s selection among tastes, opinions, and value judgments, rather than a 

recognizable public interest,’’ and ‘‘must be closely scrutinized lest they carry the 

Commission too far in the direction of the forbidden censorship.’’ 58

In those instances in which Congress has adopted affirmative obligations—such 

as the requirement of Section 312(a)(7) of the Communications Act that broadcast 

licensees provide ‘‘reasonable’’ access to Federal political candidates—it has stressed 

that the requirement must be implemented ‘‘on an individualized basis’’ and not on 

the basis of ‘‘across-the-board policies.’’ 59 The Commission has never attempted to 

specify what amount of candidate access is ’’reasonable’’ and the Supreme Court’s 

First Amendment analysis of the law assumed that the broadcaster’s editorial discretion would be accorded appropriate deference.60

In Turner I, the Supreme Court emphasized ‘‘the minimal extent’’ that the government may influence the programming provided by broadcast stations. The Court 

noted that ‘‘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.’’ 61

Similarly, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit 

expressly avoided approving ‘‘a more active role by the FCC in oversight of programming’’ on educational stations because it would ‘‘threaten to upset the constitutional 

balance struck in CBS v. DNC.’’ 62 The challenge facing broadcast content regulation 

is the need to reconcile public interest mandates with constitutional commands and 

statutory restrictions. 

2. Affirmative Programming Mandates 

As a general matter, broadcast licensees have a public interest obligation to provide programming that is responsive to the needs of the community of license.63 To 

ensure compliance, the FCC requires radio and television broadcasters to file quarterly reports listing the programs that have provided the station’s most significant 

treatment of community issues during the proceeding three month period. This list 

must include a brief narrative statement describing what issues were given significant treatment and which programs addressed the particular issues. The report 

must list the air date, day part, as well as program length and title of the programs.64 The station’s overall performance in serving the community is evaluated 

at license renewal time. 

22 

65 En Banc Programming Inquiry, 44 F.C.C. at 2314. 66 Id. 67See Primer on Ascertainment of Community Problems by Broadcast Applicants, 27 F.C.C.2d 

650 (1971). 68Deregulation of Radio, 84 F.C.C.2d 968 (1981), af’d. in part and remanded in part, Office 

of Communication of the United Church of Christ v. FCC, 707 F.2d 1413 (D.C. Cir. 1983). 69 Revision of Programming and Commercialization Policies, Ascertainment Requirements, and 

Program Requirements for Commercial Television Stations, 98 F.C.C.2d 1078 (1984); Revisions 

of Programming Policies and Reporting Requirements Related to Public Broadcasting Licensees, 

96 F.C.C.2d 74 (1984). See Action for Children’s Television v. FCC, 821 F.2d 741 (D.C. Cir. 1987) 

(remanding FCC decision to eliminate commercial guidelines for children’s programming). 70See Black Citizens for a Fair Media v. FCC, 719 F.2d 407 (D.C. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 

467 U.S. 1255 (1984). 71See FCC v. WNCN Listeners Guild, 450 U.S. at 604. 72 News America Publishing, Inc. v. FCC, 844 F.2d 800, 811 (D.C. Cir. 1988), quoting Red 

Lion, 395 U.S. at 388. See Meredith Corp. v. FCC, 809 F.2d 863, 867 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (‘‘the Court 

reemphasized that the rationale of Red Lion is not immutable’’). See also Banzhaf, 405 F.2d at 

1100 (‘‘some venerable FCC policies cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny in the light of contemporary understanding of the First Amendment and the modern proliferation of broadcasting 

outlets’’). 73Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995, S. Rpt. 104–23, 104th Cong. 

1st Sess. 2–3 (Mar. 30, 1995). 

The FCC previously enforced such programming requirements in a far more detailed way. In its 1960 En Banc Programming Inquiry, for example, the Commission 

listed 14 categories of programs generally considered necessary to serve the public 

interest, including programs that provided an opportunity for local self-expression, 

programs that used local talent, children’s programs, religious programs, educational programs, public affairs programs, editorials, political broadcasts, agricultural programs, news, weather and market reports, sports programs, service to minority groups and (finally) entertainment programming.65 Although the Commission 

did not prescribe the transmission of particular programs, noting that the specified 

categories should not be considered ‘‘a rigid mold of fixed formula for station operation,’’ it nevertheless concluded that the listed programming types, provided in 

some reasonable mix, provided evidence that a licensee was operating in the public 

interest.66 This was enforced through the use of formal ascertainment procedures, 

which required applicants for broadcast licenses to interview community leaders in 

19 specified categories ranging from agriculture to religion.67

In 1981 the FCC eliminated its rules and policies that required radio stations to 

keep program logs and conduct ascertainment of community problems, imposing 

non-entertainment programming requirements and limiting the amount of commercial time.68 The FCC similarly deregulated television, eliminating ascertainment 

and other requirements in 1984.69 The Commission also simplified the renewal process, eliminating the detailed program-related questions that had accompanied the 

ascertainment process.70 Generally, the FCC moved away from examining the programming formats chosen by broadcast stations, leaving such decisions to marketplace forces.71

C. The Prospect for Expanded Public Interest Mandates 

Whether or not Congress or the FCC at the present time could constitutionally 

adopt more detailed content requirements under the public interest standard is not 

an easy question to answer. As a threshold matter, it is difficult to assess the potential constitutionality of content regulations in the absence of a concrete proposal. Although the prevailing standard for broadcast regulation articulated in Red Lion has 

permitted the government to regulate broadcast content more intensively than other 

media in the past, the courts have never defined how far this power might extend. 

Additionally, it has been thirty-four years since the Supreme Court decided Red 

Lion, a case based on ’the present state of commercially acceptable technology’ as 

of 1969.’’ 72

Since then, both Congress and the FCC have found that the media marketplace 

has undergone vast changes. For example, the legislative history to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 suggested that the historical justifications for the FCC’s 

regulation of broadcasting require reconsideration. The Senate Report noted that 

‘‘[c]hanges in technology and consumer preferences have made the 1934 [Communications] Act a historical anachronism.’’ It explained that ‘‘the [Communications] 

Act was not prepared to handle the growth of cable television’’ and that ‘‘[t]he 

growth of cable programming has raised questions about the rules that govern 

broadcasters’’ among others.73 The House of Representatives’ legislative findings 

were even more direct. The House Commerce Committee pointed out that the audio 

23 

74 Communications Act of 1995, H. Rpt. 104–204, 104th Cong. 1st Sess. 54 (July 24, 1995). 75Meredith Corp., 809 F.2d at 867, citing Report Concerning General Fairness Doctrine Obligations of Broadcast Licensees, 102 F.C.C.2d 143 (1985) (‘‘1985 Fairness Doctrine Report’’). See Syracuse Peace Council, 867 F.2d at 660–666 (discussing 1985 Fairness Doctrine Report and upholding FCC’s decision to repeal the fairness doctrine). 76 2002 Biennial Regulatory Review—Review of the Commission’s Broadcast Ownership Rules 

and Other Rules Adopted Pursuant to Section 202 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, FCC 

03–127, ¶ 4 (released July 2, 2003) (‘‘Biennial Regulatory Review’’). 77 Id. at ¶¶ 86–87. 78 Id. ¶ 88. 79Playboy Entertainment Group, 529 U.S. at 817–818; Sable Communications of California, 

Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 129 (1989) (‘‘Deference to a legislative finding cannot limit judicial 

inquiry when First Amendment rights are at stake.’’) (citation omitted). 80Turner I, 512 U.S. at 637 (emphasis added). 81 93 F.3d 957 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (upholding 47 U.S.C. § 335(b)(1) against a First Amendment 

challenge). 82 Id. at 975. 83 Judge Steven Williams, joined by Judges Edwards, Silberman, Ginsburg, and Sentelle, 

sharply questioned the central premises of extending the constitutional rationale of broadcast 

regulation. Time Warner Entertainment Company v. FCC, 105 F.3d 723 (D.C. Cir.) (Williams, 

J., dissenting). 84 Id. at 724 nn. 1–2. 

and video marketplace has undergone significant changes over the past 50 years 

‘‘and the scarcity rationale for government regulation no longer applies.’’ 74

The FCC has reached similar conclusions over the years. In the mid-1980s, for 

example, the Commission ‘‘found that the ‘scarcity rationale,’ which historically justified content regulation of broadcasting . . . is no longer valid.’’ 75 Most recently, 

in complying with the congressional mandate to conduct a biennial review of broadcast regulations, the FCC once again found that the media landscape has been 

transformed.76 It concluded that ‘‘the modern media marketplace is far different 

than just a decade ago,’’ finding that traditional media ‘‘have greatly evolved’’ and 

‘‘new modes of media have transformed the landscape, providing more choice, greater flexibility, and more control than at any other time in history.’’ 77 People coming 

of age in this environment enjoy an ‘‘extraordinary level of abundance in today’s 

media marketplace’’ and thus ‘‘have come to expect immediate and continuous access to news, information, and entertainment.’’ 78 Of course, if Congress or the FCC 

chose to adopt new public interest requirements, they would be expected to adopt 

new legislative or regulatory findings. But any new rules regulating broadcast content would necessarily implicate the First Amendment, and reviewing courts would 

not be required to defer to the policymakers’ findings.79

In this context, it is not easy to predict how the Supreme Court might treat new 

content regulations. It has been a long time since the Court has directly confronted 

the constitutional status of broadcasting, and where the issue has come up in dictum, its endorsement of Red Lion has been lukewarm at best. In Turner I, for example, the Court rejected the government’s bid to extend the principles of Red Lion 

to the regulation of cable television. After noting the Commission’s ‘‘minimal’’ authority over broadcast content, the Court pointed out that ‘‘the rationale for applying a less rigorous standard of First Amendment scrutiny to broadcast regulation, 

whatever its validity in the cases elaborating it, does not apply in the context of 

cable television.’’ 80

Lower court decisions in this area have reached mixed results. The case that provides the strongest support for some type of expanded public interest requirement 

is Time Warner Entertainment Co. v. FCC, which used a straightforward application 

of Red Lion to uphold a 1992 Cable Act provision requiring Direct Broadcast Satellite (‘‘DBS’’) operators to set aside four to seven percent of their channel capacity 

for ‘‘noncommercial programming of an educational or informational nature.’’ 81 The 

panel reasoned that the provision ‘‘should be analyzed under the same relaxed 

standard of scrutiny that the court has applied to the traditional broadcast 

media.’’ 82

However, a deadlocked court of appeals denied rehearing in that case, and five 

judges endorsed a dissenting statement that casts a shadow over the panel’s strong 

endorsement of Red Lion.83 The five dissenters pointed out that ‘‘[e]ven in its heartland application, Red Lion has been the subject of intense criticism,’’ noting that the 

assumptions underlying spectrum scarcity are suspect in light of the scarce nature 

of all economic goods.84 Judge Williams noted that the Red Lion Court suggested 

that the reason for such relaxed treatment would vanish along with the end of scarcity, and pointed out that, even in its nascent state, ‘‘[t]he new DBS technology already offers more channel capacity than the cable industry, and far more than tradiVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
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85 Id. at 725. 86 Id. at 726. 87Other lower courts have declined to apply the Time Warner panel’s analysis of Red Lion. 

See Satellite Broadcasting & Communications Ass’n. of America v. FCC, 146 F. Supp. 2d 803, 

823 (E.D. Va. 2001) (rejecting Time Warner analysis and applying intermediate scrutiny) (‘‘numerous courts have questioned and/or declined to extend the Red Lion rationale’’). 88 309 F.3d 796 (D.C. Cir. 2002). 89 Id. at 805. 90 Radio-Television News Directors Assn. v. FCC, 229 F.3d 269 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (per curiam). 91 Id. at 270 (it is ‘‘incumbent upon the Commission to ’explain why the public interest would 

benefit from rules that raise these policy and constitutional doubts’) (citation omitted). 

tional broadcasting.’’ 85 The dissent further reasoned that the DBS set-aside requirement for ‘‘educational’’ or ‘‘informational’’ programming is content-based, and that 

‘‘as a simple government regulation of content, the DBS requirement would have to 

fall.’’ 86 In light of the 55 deadlock among the D.C. Circuit judges, the Time Warner 

case represents more of a hung jury than it does a constitutional mandate for new 

content regulations.87

Other cases further suggest that reviewing courts will closely scrutinize any new 

regulation of broadcast content. In MPAA v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit vacated the Commission’s video description rules.88 Although the court analyzed only the question 

of whether the FCC had been given statutory authority to adopt the rules, it explained that it interpreted the Commission’s powers narrowly because any regulation of programming content ‘‘invariably raise[s] First Amendment issues.’’89 It expressed no opinion on the constitutional issues, but the thrust of the holding was 

that the FCC’s general public interest authority over programming is far less expansive than was previously assumed. 

The same conclusion follows from the D.C. Circuit’s decision in RTNDA v. FCC, 

where the court ordered the Commission to repeal the personal attack and political 

editorial rules.90 There, the court held that the FCC had the burden to justify rules 

that ‘‘interfere with editorial judgment of professional journalists and entangle the 

government in day-to-day operations of the media.’’ 91 Although the court did not decide whether such rules are constitutional or would serve the public interest, it was 

unwilling to allow the FCC to continue to enforce the content restrictions (that already had been subject to protracted review) while the Commission assessed their 

validity. 

Conclusion 

The First Amendment and the public interest standard require Congress and the 

FCC to ‘‘walk a tightrope’’ between the enforceable public obligations of broadcast 

licensees and the Constitution’s command that ‘‘Congress shall make no law . . . 

abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .’’ That task is made more difficult by rapidly changing technology that alters the assumptions upon which previous theories of regulation were grounded. It is especially problematic since the 

regulations at issue uniquely apply to only one medium—broadcasting—that is less 

and less unique in an age of convergence. Accordingly, it would be prudent for policymakers to proceed cautiously in this area. 

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ATTACHMENT 2 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Faber. 

STATEMENT OF BARRY M. FABER, VICE PRESIDENT AND 

GENERAL COUNSEL, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP, INC. 

Mr. FABER. Good morning. My name is Barry Faber. I’m Vice 

President and General Counsel of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is one of the Nation’s largest independent free over-the-air television broadcasters, owning and/or providing services to more 

than 60 television stations in 39 markets across the country. 

At Sinclair, we take our commitment to meeting the locally based 

needs of all of our communities very seriously. Each of our marketbased station general managers makes a myriad of decisions, from 

media sponsorship of local charitable events to carriage of community-based programming, from the publicizing of the local activities 

to the broadcast of community calendars, to serving the informational needs of the community through the presentation of news 

programming. 

I understand that this last topic, news, is the primary reason 

Sinclair was invited to participate in today’s hearing. More specifically, the Committee is interested in the implementation of a centralized news service, News Central, that Sinclair is currently rolling out to a number of its markets. 

News Central is simply a service pursuant to which nonlocal 

news stories, that is, certain national and international news, are 

written and produced a single time in a centralized location for use 

in a number of stations. Rather than 39 reporters in 39 markets 

researching, writing, and producing 39 stories on a single national 

or international news event, the story is produced a single time for 

broadcast in our markets. 

I am well aware that there are some who criticize News Central 

for a variety of competitive or philosophical reasons, or because 

they do not understand how News Central works. I welcome the 

opportunity to be here to set the record straight by explaining the 

significant contributions that News Central is making to localism. 

Nationally, most ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates have numerous 

hours of local newscasts each day across which they can spread the 

cost of producing news. In contrast, only a handful of WB and UPN 

stations in only the largest markets have any newscasts at all. As 


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a case in point, News Corporation’s UPN–20 and Tribune’s WB–50 

here in Washington, D.C., a Top 10 market, do not have any news. 

Many Fox affiliates in medium and smaller markets also do not 

have news, and even where they do, it is typically limited to 1 hour 

per day. Sinclair has television stations affiliated with all six of the 

major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB, and UPN, and I believe our levels of news operations have historically mirrored that 

of the rest of the industry. 

Going forward, however, our News Central model is designed to 

achieve certain efficiencies so that we can provide viewers with 

more choices for local news, particularly in the smaller markets, 

where choices are currently limited. These efficiencies have been 

made possible in part by recent technological advances. News Central will allow Sinclair to launch local newscasts on Fox, WB, UPN, 

and independent stations in medium and small markets, as well as 

to relaunch newscasts on Big Three affiliates where we have previously discontinued local news operations due to financial and 

competitive concerns. 

Significantly, however, each market served by News Central will 

have its own complete, separate, locally based news team, consisting of reporters, producers, anchors, photographers, et cetera, 

and these news rooms will focus 100 percent of their attention and 

resources on local news only. As a result, we believe these local 

news operations will provide a better focused and more locally tailored newscast than our competitors, who will continue to devote 

local resources to producing national and international news stories 

that have no local impact. 

At each News Central station, the local portion of the news is 

independently produced by the local staff based on their decision 

as to which news is of greatest interest to their specific community. 

Then, at a commonly prescribed time, each of the stations turns 

the newscast over to the national-international news desk, at 

which point the single, centrally produced news report will be 

broadcast at each of the stations. 

The current economic and advertising climate, combined with the 

increasing popularity of national cable news networks, has not 

been kind to local news operations. As I referenced earlier, Sinclair 

was forced to shut down local news operations on three Big Three 

network affiliates between the end of 2000 and the beginning of 

2002, and we are not alone. For example, example, a major network-owned news operation was shut down in a Top 10 city late 

last year. 

News Central, however, is allowing Sinclair to change direction. 

Rather than news shutdowns, we anticipate that by the end of this 

year, Sinclair will have added news programming in eight markets, 

resulting not incidentally in a net increase of more than 200 news 

jobs since last summer, with more growth to come, and we expect 

to continue to grow our news force over the coming years, as we 

roll out News Central to additional markets. 

I note, by the way, that the News Central model is far from revolutionary. For many years, the use of shared stories has been the 

newspaper model. Similarly, in television, local stations have relied 

on news services such as CNN to provide national and international news stories for use in a large number of stations across 

47 

the country. CNN was built on the same model as is News Central, 

namely, the efficiency of having a single report prepared for many 

stations. 

An even closer analogy to News Central can be seen in the network news model that hundreds of ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates 

followed every day for decades. Under that model, these stations 

present a half-hour of primarily local news produced in the various 

communities, followed by a half-hour national and international 

newscast produced a single time by their network in New York for 

broadcast in virtually every community in the United States. 

Let me conclude by again noting how pleased I am to have had 

the chance to appear here today. Sinclair takes very seriously its 

responsibility to the many communities it serves, and believes that 

News Central will allow us to better serve the public interest of the 

various localities. I hope my explanation of how the News Central 

model works has illustrated why this is the case, and has cleared 

up any misperceptions that may have existed. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Faber follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BARRY M. FABER, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL

COUNSEL, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP, INC. 

Good morning. My name is Barry Faber and I am the Vice President and General 

Counsel of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is the Nation’s largest, independent, 

free, over-the-air television broadcasters, owning and/or providing services to more 

than 60 television stations in 39 markets across the United States. 

At Sinclair, we take our commitment to meeting the locally-based needs of all of 

our communities very seriously. Each of our market-based station general managers 

makes a myriad of decisions from media sponsorship of local charitable events to 

carriage of community based programming, from the publicizing of local activities 

through the broadcast of community calendars to serving the informational needs 

of the community through the presentation of news programming. 

I understand that this last topic—news—is the primary reason Sinclair was invited to participate in today’s hearing. More specifically, the Committee is interested 

in the implementation of a centralized news service, known as News Central, that 

Sinclair is currently rolling out to a number of its markets. News Central is simply 

a service pursuant to which non-local news stories, that is certain national and 

international news, will be written and produced a single time at a centralized location for use at a number of stations. Rather than thirty-nine reporters in thirty-nine 

markets researching, writing and producing thirty-nine stories on a single national 

or international news event, the story will be produced a single time for broadcast 

in each of the markets. 

I am well aware that there are some who criticize News Central for a variety of 

competitive or philosophical reasons or because they do not understand how News 

Central works. I welcome the opportunity to be here to set the record straight by 

explaining the significant contributions that News Central is making to localism. 

Nationally, most ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates have numerous hours of local 

newscasts each day, whereas only a handful of WB and UPN stations in only the 

largest markets have any newscasts at all. Many FOX affiliates in medium and 

smaller markets also do not have news and even where they do, it is typically limited to one hour per day. Case in point, News Corporation’s UPN 20 and Tribune’s 

WB 50 here in Washington, DC—a top ten market—do not have news. Sinclair has 

television stations affiliated with the six major networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, 

WB and UPN and I believe our news operations have historically mirrored that of 

the rest of the industry. 

Going forward, however, our News Central model is designed to achieve certain 

efficiencies so that we can provide viewers with more choices for local news particularly in the smaller markets where choices are already limited. News Central will 

allow Sinclair to launch local newscasts on FOX, WB, UPN and independent stations in medium and smaller markets, as well as to relaunch newscasts on big 3 

affiliates where we previously discontinued local news operations due to financial 

and competitive concerns. 

48 

Other operating efficiencies are achieved by capitalizing on the newest technologies as we continue to build brand-new, state-of-the-art news facilities in numerous cities. All of these efficiencies allow us to launch local news on stations that 

have neither had news in the past nor were expected to add news using the 50-year 

old news model. 

Significantly, however, each market served by News Central will have a complete 

locally-based news team, consisting of reporters, producers, anchors, photographers, 

etc and these news rooms will focus 100 percent of their attention and resources 

on local news only. As a result, we believe these local news operations will provide 

a better-focused and more locally-tailored newscast than our competitors, which will 

continue to devote resources to producing national and international news stories 

that have no local impact. 

At each News Central station, the local portion of the news is independently produced by the local staff based on their decision as to which news is of greatest interest to their specific community, then, at a commonly prescribed time, each of the 

stations turns the newscast over to the national/international news desk at which 

point the single, centrally-produced news report will be broadcast on each of the stations. 

The current economic and advertising climate, combined with the increasing popularity of national cable networks, has not been kind to local news operations. For 

example a major network-owned news operation was shut down in a top 10 city late 

last year. And last fall, two media giants discussed combining their cable and broadcast news operations with an aim toward saving $100 million. A large portion of 

those savings would most likely have been in jobs and not equipment. However, we 

anticipate that by the end of this year Sinclair will have had a net increase of more 

than 200 news jobs since last summer with more growth to come. And we expect 

to grow our news force over the coming years as we continue to roll-out News Central. 

I note, by the way, that the News Central model is far from revolutionary. For 

many years, like the newspaper model, local stations have relied on news services, 

such as CNN, to provide national and international news stories for use on a large 

number of stations across the country. CNN was built on the same model as is News 

Central, namely the efficiency of having a single report prepared for many stations. 

An even closer analogy to News Central can be seen in the network news model 

that hundreds of ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates have followed every day for decades. 

Under that model, these stations present a half-hour of primarily local news produced in their various communities, followed by a half-hour national and international newscast produced by their network in New York for broadcast in virtually 

every community in the United States. 

Let me conclude by again noting how pleased I am to have had the chance to appear here today. Sinclair takes very seriously its responsibility to the many communities it serves and believes that News Central will allow us to better serve the public interest of these various localities. I hope my explanation of how the News Central model works has illustrated why this is the case and has cleared up any 

misperceptions that may have existed. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Davis, welcome. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID J. DAVIS, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL 

MANAGER, WPVI—CHANNEL 6 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Senator McCain. Thank you to the rest 

of the Committee. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, pull the microphone over in front of you. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DAVIS. Is that better? 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. DAVIS. I want to thank Senator Specter who came in. Senator Specter is one of our more informed attentive viewers. He certainly doesn’t agree with everything we do every time, but he’s 

been a great friend of this station, and I also acknowledge Senator 

Lautenberg, who I knew—I was his director during his first term 

in the Senate, and he knows our connection to South Jersey and 

has taken advantage of our studios in Trenton a number of times. 

49 

You’ve got my written testimony, so I won’t read it right now. I’d 

just like to talk as long as I can about two things that I’m very 

fond, of Channel 6 and the Greater Philadelphia region. We are 

owned by ABC, the same company that owns our network, but I 

do not just represent the hundreds of broadcasters, employees at 

Channel 6, but also the thousands of dedicated local broadcasts at 

our other nine television stations across the country. 

We all have a similar operating philosophy. Even though we 

don’t have a group news director, group program director, we are 

independent, but we share some common causes. Our first priority 

is news. Let me take that back. Our first, second, third, fourth, and 

fifth priority is news. Two-thirds of our employees work in the 

news department, the rest work in some regard to support them. 

We produce over 30 hours of live local news per week. It’s done 

right there at the television station. Senator Hollings, we are open 

24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You’re always welcome. The door 

is always open. 

Local news is supplemented by 30 hours per week of network 

news from ABC, which produces high quality programs like Good 

Morning America, Nightline, World News Tonight, and we benefit 

from that relationship. 

We also have a very active public affairs department. We produce 

7 weekly shows. We locally program the prime access time period 

on Saturday. We have a magazine show, ‘‘Prime Time,’’ that highlights the positive accomplishments of schools, businesses, and 

human interest stories, followed by ‘‘Visions,’’ a long-running program that highlights concerns of our many minority populations. 

We produce half-hour shows called ‘‘Perspective New Jersey’’ and 

‘‘Perspective Delaware,’’ that focus on our issues in those states. 

Because we cover parts of three states, we have an obligation to 

those states. 

We also have in addition news bureaus in Trenton and the Jersey Shore. We have studio facilities in Trenton and in Wilmington, 

Delaware, better to serve those local communities and those cities. 

We also have the longest-running Hispanic theme show in the 

country, Puerto Rican Panorama, 33 years on our air. We produce, 

with the cooperation of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, weekly 

mass on Sunday mornings. We also allow that time period to be 

used by other religions during their holiday periods. We produce 

shows weekly, quarterly, and annually for children and their parents, Perspective Youth, Children First, Fast Forward. We just finished our Best in the Class program. Every year we invite about 

300 of our high schools to submit their best students, bring them 

all together at Longwood Gardens, tape a show of them, then we 

feature them in 60-second vignettes for the whole month of June, 

so every parent gets to see their child’s picture on Channel 6. 

We do live interview shows Sunday morning, 8 a.m., take viewer 

call-ins, also an opinion show on Sunday mornings for the local 

opinion leaders to discuss issues. 

We’re proud to be known as the debate station. Last election 

cycle we held debates not only for the general election but for the 

primary for the Pennsylvania Governor, the New Jersey Senator, 

and 13 Congressional districts. We’ve done DA’s races, attorneys 

general races in Delaware. 

50 

Last May in Philadelphia, we held 4 hour-long debates, some of 

those in cooperation with our sponsors, League of Women Voters, 

NAACP. We work with the Annenberg School at the University of 

Pennsylvania. I have a letter from Dean Jamieson of the 

Annenberg School that gives more explanation of how we work 

with Penn to better improve not just our debates, but our political 

coverage within our newscasts. 

We’re proud to be the community station of major events. We 

just opened up the new Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the 

first museum dedicated to the Constitution. If you haven’t seen it 

yet, it’s a great facility. I think it’s going to be a great national attraction. 

We did a prime time special, preempting the network July 3 to 

preview that facility for our viewers, did a Liberty Medal ceremony 

where we honored Justice O’Connor in the morning, then we did 

a parade, fireworks, concert at night. We do that every year. For 

that, we did the pro cycling bike race, the largest bike race in the 

country, brings 200,000 people out in the City of Philadelphia. We 

cover that for 6 hours, preempt the network sports program that 

day. 

We love parades. We did do a lot of parades, because it’s important. We serve a lot of different ethnic communities. We do the St. 

Patrick’s Day Parade, we do the Puerto Rican Day Parade, we do 

the Pulaski Day Parade—you get about 12 people marching in the 

same direction, we’ll be likely to cover it. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DAVIS. We enjoy doing that, and it reflects the effort of those 

communities to put on their best effort on those days. 

Thanksgiving Day Parade is the oldest Thanksgiving Day Parade 

in the country. It used to be Gimbel’s. It was before Macy’s. Then 

Gimbel’s went out of business in 1987. The person that had my job 

then said, we’ll do that parade. He hired four producers from 

Gimbel’s, put them down on that first floor. That parade office is 

still there. He hired the bands, brought up floats, put that on every 

year as a benefit to the City of Philadelphia, and it’s a great event. 

It creates goods for infants and mothers with the Girl Scouts. We 

have the biggest food drive of the Boy Scouts. If the Fire Chief 

were here, he’d say that our fire safety program—we give away 

100,000 smoke detectors—has cut the fire death and injury rate in 

Philadelphia. 

We’re proud of all those things. I heard Commissioner Powell 

talked about ascertainment. I was around when ascertainment was 

around. We do a little bit better than that. We have a standing 

Community Advisory Board made up of about 10 members of the 

community. They’re freely chosen and elected. They do their own 

choosing of who’s on that Board. They meet every month. They invite leaders of the television stations, including myself, to their 

meetings and tell us what we’re doing right and what we’re doing 

wrong. 

I see my time is up. I would just like to say that you folks are 

going to make important decisions on media ownership in this 

country, and I respect that. I would just ask if you please not make 

any of that decision based on the fact that we’re not good broadcasters just because we also happen to own the network. 

51 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Davis follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID J. DAVIS, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, WPVI—CHANNEL 6 

Good Morning Chairman McCain, Senator Hollings and members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to address your committee. 

My name is Dave Davis. I am the President and General Manager of WPVI, 

Channel 6, in Philadelphia, and I am here to represent the thousands of dedicated 

local broadcasters at WPVI and the other ABC Owned TV Stations. 

The ABC Owned stations are industry leaders in local news and community service. Anyone who tells you that an ABC Owned station is not committed to local service is not speaking the truth. Our commitment to localism is not the result of government regulation. We strive to be the most locally relevant station because we believe that is the surest path to commercial success. A station that is #1 in local news 

and community service will almost always rank among the most commercially successful stations in the market. 

WPVI was first licensed in 1947 to Walter Annenberg, whose family owned the 

Philadelphia Inquirer, among other media properties. In 1953, we became the first 

affiliate of the ABC network. In 1970, the station was sold to Capital Cities Communications, which grew to buy ABC in 1985, and in 1995, The Walt Disney Company 

bought ABC. 

Even as the names on the license have changed, our operating philosophy through 

the years has stayed the same. We try very hard every day to be the best possible 

community television station for our viewers. That’s a tall order, because there are 

2.8 million television homes within our Nielsen-designated market. Besides Philadelphia, we cover seven other counties in southeastern Pennsylvania, the southern 

half of New Jersey, and the state of Delaware. We have a saying at the station that 

acts as our guide—‘‘take care of the viewers, and everything else will take care of 

itself’’. Let me explain how we try to do that. 

We try to provide the right combination of news, information, and entertainment 

programming. If you have a TV set with a rabbit ear antenna, you can sit there 

and watch Channel 6 twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and enjoy the 

most expensive programming in the television industry—for free. 

Our most important priority is news. We produce more than thirty hours per 

week of live, local news. More than half of our employees work in the news department, and many of the rest of us work to support the news programs. Our local 

news is supplemented by the ABC Network that provides more than thirty hours 

per week of national and world news. So during a normal broadcast day, on average, 

approximately half of our time is devoted to news. 

Although we have won numerous awards from industry peers, our most important 

judges are the viewers, and we are proud of the fact that they have made Channel 

6 the leading source for news in our tri-state region, reaching more than three million people in a normal week. 

Of course, most weeks in the news business are not normal, so we frequently program news outside its normal time periods. Everyone at the station knows if there 

is an emergency or major even—anything that we think our viewers need to know 

now—we tell them. We will pre-empt the most popular syndicated or network programs to inform our viewers when we feel it is necessary, and those decisions are 

made at the station level, either by me or one of our department heads—NOT by 

anyone at the ABC Network. We have produced hours of continuous, often commercial-free news programming during weather emergencies, natural or man-made disasters, major elections, and times of civic celebration. 

In addition to news, we produce significant local programming from our public affairs department. We are one of the few stations in the country to locally program 

the prime access time period every Saturday, instead of using reruns of syndicated 

programs. Our viewers enjoy a half-hour magazine show—‘‘Prime Time’’—that highlights achievements of local people in their schools, communities or businesses. 

That’s followed by ‘‘Visions,’’ a half-hour program designed to focus on issues important to the many minority communities in our region. Other weekly programs include ‘‘Perspective New Jersey’’ and ‘‘Perspective Delaware’’, interview shows with 

newsmakers in those states, produced at our Trenton and Wilmington news bureaus. In addition to news personnel, we maintain studios at those sites to better 

serve those areas. We also staff a news bureau at the Jersey shore. 

We produce weekly, monthly, and quarterly programs aimed at young people and 

their parents. We just finished our annual ‘‘Best of the Class’’ program, where we 

52 

feature three hundred of the best high school students in our region in an hour-long 

prime access program, then during the month of June, we produce and air oneminute vignettes of every student. Of course, we let the proud parents know when 

their kids will be on Channel 6. 

We produce the longest running Hispanic-themed show in the country—‘‘Puerto 

Rican Panorama’’ has been on Channel 6 for 33 years. We produce a weekly Catholic mass on Sunday mornings, and substitute specials from other religions during 

their holiday periods. 

Later on Sunday morning, we air an hour-long live, local interview show to expand on major stories of the week, and take phone calls from viewers. We also have 

‘‘Inside Story’’, a weekly panel of local opinion leaders giving their take on current 

events. 

We are proud of the fact that Channel 6 is known as the place for local political 

debates. In the most recent election cycle, we produced and aired hour-long, commercial free debates for both the primary and general election for Pennsylvania governor and New Jersey Senate. In 2000, we held debates for New Jersey governor 

and statewide races in Delaware, and in the last Philadelphia mayor’s race, we 

hosted four hour-long debates. For most of our debates, we partner with groups like 

the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, and the Chamber of Commerce. We have 

also hosted them at places like the College of New Jersey, Drexel University, and 

the University of Pennsylvania to give students more of an opportunity to see these 

debates in person. And like everything else we do, our debates are designed to attract viewers. We promote and air them in high-visibility time periods, like prime 

access. Right now we are working on two debates for the upcoming Philadelphia 

mayor’s race. We also work with the Annenberg Public Policy Center and School for 

Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, both as a partner for political debates, and as a source for improving the quality of political coverage at the local 

level. A letter with more details from its director, Kathleen Hall Jamieson is attached to my testimony. 

If there is a big event in our region, we want to be part of it. We just finished 

six hours of live programming around Philadelphia’s Fourth of July celebration, 

starting with the Liberty Medal ceremony in the morning, and the parade, concert, 

and fireworks in the evening. This is something we do every year. This year we also 

televised the opening of the National Constitution Center, including a prime time 

special on July 3 to preview the museum for our viewers. The month before, we produced six hours of live coverage of the big pro bike race that circles Philadelphia. 

Also in June, we feature the non-profit Philadelphia Zoo in a half-hour program to 

highlight its attractions. In March, we previewed the annual Philadelphia Flower 

Show in an hour prime access special, and we are now preparing to produce coverage of the Marian Anderson award ceremony in November. 

And we do love a parade. One of our largest productions each year is the city’s 

Thanksgiving Day Parade, the oldest in the country. It started out as the Gimbel’s 

parade, but when that department store went out of business in 1987, Channel 6 

stepped in to produce the parade. We actually have a parade office at the station, 

because it is a year-round job to bring in the bands, floats, balloons, and other attractions in the parade. We also broadcast the annual Puerto Rican Day parade, the 

Pulaski Day parade, the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and the Columbus Day parade, 

each live for two hours, usually at the expense of pre-empting network programming. 

In addition to special programs, there are other station efforts during the year to 

partner with non-profit organizations. We produce a fire safety campaign every January to educate viewers, and with the cooperation of local fire departments, Channel 

6 has given away more than 100,000 smoke detectors and 50,000 batteries. Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Harold Hairston gives us credit for helping to cut the city’s 

fire death and injury toll during the program’s ten-year history. With the local Boy 

Scouts, we operate the largest single food drive every year for the Philadelphia Food 

Bank. With the Girl Scouts, we collect more than 40,000 items for infants and new 

mothers in our annual Baby Bundles campaign. With the American Cancer Society, 

we help raise awareness and funding for breast cancer research. 

In the unlikely event that we would neglect any of our commitment to our local 

communities, we have a built-in safeguard. For more than thirty years, Channel 6 

has maintained a Community Advisory Board, made up of about ten community 

members and leaders, representing different ethnic groups and geographical areas. 

They are independently elected for several year terms, and meet on a monthly basis 

to discuss station programming and employment issues. They share those discussions with the department heads, and me and we value their input. 

So that is a glimpse of how we operate WPVI–TV. But I also represent today the 

other nine ABC Owned Television Stations and from them you would hear the same 

53 

speech. Even though we have no group program director, no group news director, 

no shared theme music, no shared technical hub—we do have a similar operating 

formula. Do what is in the best interest of your local communities, and the company 

will back you up. 

All of our stations invest heavily in local news and local programming. That IS 

our core operating philosophy. Attached to my testimony are typical and illustrative 

examples of the outstanding local service rendered by each of the ABC Owned stations. Let me mention a few highlights. KTRK presents the 4th of July celebration 

in Houston, does the rodeo parade, and carries a large commitment of public affairs 

programming. KFSN in Fresno just pre-empted prime access for a one-hour town 

hall meeting on air quality in the Central Valley of California. Maybe the best example of what it means to be an ABC owned station comes from the two stations 

we most recently purchased, WTVG in Toledo, and WJRT in Flint. On its first day 

as an ABC owned station, WTVG bought more than a million dollars worth of additional newsgathering equipment, and within a year, added twelve hours of local 

news per week. Let me say that again, after ABC bought this local Toledo station; 

the station added 12 hours of additional local news each week. Our manager there 

pre-empts the ABC network to carry the Toledo Mud Hens baseball game on opening day, Bowling Green football, and political debates. And after ABC bought WJRT 

in Flint, that station added similar amounts of local news, and invested more than 

seven million dollars in a new broadcast facility in a redevelopment area of Flint. 

So now the question is—why do ABC owned stations have such a strong commitment to local service? We certainly take seriously the service to community standard 

in our license, but I think you would agree that our record of outstanding local community service goes way beyond legal license requirements. Pardon me, but forget 

the government. We have to answer to our viewers. And we have to do that every 

day. When they have more than a hundred channels to choose from, and we want 

them to choose us, we think the best way to do that is to provide the best possible 

service. We don’t get any subscriber fees, or have a dual revenue stream—one hundred percent of our revenue comes from advertising that is totally dependent upon 

viewership. If people don’t watch, we don’t get paid, and if you aren’t the best local 

station, people don’t watch. It’s that simple. 

Mr. Chairman, I have been going to work at a local television station every day 

for the last 26 years, assigned to a lot of different jobs. Sometimes I worked at a 

station that was co-owned with a network and sometimes I didn’t. The feeling towards my job never changed. The most enjoyment came from knowing that you were 

helping to supply something of value to lots of people-valuable news information, 

positive public service programming, a chance for local companies to market their 

products, and just good, solid, quality entertainment, available free to all the homes 

in our community. 

You are going to make decisions on media ownership in this country based on 

your collective wisdom, and I respect that. I am only asking you to please not base 

any decision on the false premise that Network Owned stations like Channel 6 in 

Philadelphia do not do their best to serve their local community. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you today, and I would be glad 

to try and answer any of your questions. 

THE ANNENBERG PUBLIC POLICY CENTER

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Philadelphia, PA, July 18, 2003 

Mr. DAVE DAVIS, 

General Manager, 

WPVI, 

Philadelphia, PA. 

Dear Dave, 

In the process of clearing out fourteen years of files in the dean’s office, I realized 

that I had one called ‘‘WPVI’’ that is filled with evidence of your station’s dedication 

to public service and willingness to assist us in our scholarship. For both, my colleagues and I are grateful. 

At a time when access to much of political discourse comes at the price of purchasing cable, WPVI’s commitment to political access deserves special notice. 

Whether audiences reward you with ratings or not, WPVI anchors, carries, and promotes debates by candidates for the Senate and governorships from each of the 

states in the tri-state area. In the late afternoon time slot, you also have pioneered 

alternative ways of offering detailed looks at candidate positions on issues. 

54 

You also have sought ways to give the citizens of Philadelphia a stake in political 

debates. When the Student Voices project was launched in the Philadelphia high 

schools four years ago, it was WPVI that sponsored a debate that permitted students to question the candidates. It was WPVI that aired a debate in which citizens 

from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Citizen Voices project served as questioners. As important was the fact that the station promoted both. Unsurprisingly, WPVI carried 

the Liberty Medal ceremony live, as well. 

On a personal note, when, critique in hand, scholars at the Annenberg School or 

Policy Center have asked to talk with you about the station’s work, they have been 

welcome in your office. You’ve also helped us search for solutions. When we thought 

there might be a more effective way to present political news, instead of watching 

bemused as we struggled to create instances of it,. your anchors and reporters retaped stories for us to test, Without them we could not have generated the research 

reported in Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. 

So, if you have a file marked ‘‘Annenberg School’’ filled with critiques, please place 

this fan letter ahead of them as a reminder that, despite our cantankerous nature, 

some of the scholars in your audience are grateful that WPVI sees its viewers as 

citizens as well as consumers. 

Sincerely, 

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON

Professor, 

Annenberg School for Communication, 

Director, 

Annenberg Public Policy Center. 

ABC-OWNED TELEVISION STATIONS COMMITTED TO LOCALISM

KABC–TV Glendale, California 

KABC–TV’s tradition of public service involves all of Southern California’s diverse 

communities. From its 34 hour per week of locally produced news coverage to its 

decades of support to organizations throughout the region, KABC–TV’s community 

efforts are proposed by the local station, approved by the local station, planned by 

the local station, and implemented by local station personnel. This commitment to 

the community has forged its stature in the region as a successful and involved local 

broadcaster. 

KABC–TV has created long-term community programs that have benefited millions of local viewers. It started ‘‘The Spark of Love Toy Drive’’ to provide a happy 

holiday season for underserved families, implemented ‘‘Women’s Health Month’’ to 

raise funds for and awareness of women’s health issues and for 14 years have run 

the KABC–TV Kids Care Fair to provide free health screening and immunizations 

for underserved children and their families. 

Besides its ongoing community projects, KABC’s commitment to local viewers is 

evident in their regular programming schedule. KABC–TV produces more local news 

than any other station in the Southern California viewing area. KABC–TV Eyewitness News has regular features every week highlighting the good work of community organizations and volunteers. The station also produces local programming 

and special shows that serve the community, such as ‘‘Vista L.A.,’’ a weekly magazine show that highlights the Latino community in Southern California. 

KFSN–TV Fresno, California 

KFSN–TV is the leading television station within the six counties of Central California and fulfills its responsibility to those communities by compiling a long and 

honorable record of news coverage and public service to its various constituencies. 

Producing and airing 22 hours of local news every week, KFSN has received numerous honors and awards. The station recently received two RTNDA ‘‘Edward R. 

Murrow’’ Awards and an Emmy Award for best newscast. It has also produced numerous specials beneficial to their viewing audience such as ‘‘The Air We All 

Breathe,’’ an hour-long special examining the air quality issues of the Central San 

Joaquin Valley and ‘‘Valley Focus,’’ a weekly 30-minute program featuring community organizations, issues and events. 

KFSN has been a major provider of video presentations for local non-profit organizations. These presentations are produced at no cost and are used to raise funds 

and awareness for these community organizations. It has produced videos for Children’s Hospital Central California, United Cerebral Palsy of Central California, the 

Marjaree Mason Center, and the Fresno County Office of Education ‘‘Educator of the 

55 

Year’’ events. KFSN has also aired a variety of Public Service Announcements on 

topics as diverse as Black History Month and Drug-Free America. 

KGO–TV San Francisco, California 

KGO–TV is proud of its strong relationship with the market it serves. Annually, 

it dedicates millions of dollars in airtime and production costs to provide non-profit 

organizations as wells as civic organizations a strong voice in their community. 

KGO–TV provides regular public service time for thousands of Public Service Announcements and donates a large amount of high profile airtime and productions 

to many local events and non-profits. 

KGO–TV produces 4.5 hours per day and 27 hours per week of local news. In the 

past 18 months, it has interrupted regularly scheduled programming 110 times for 

a total of 24 hours and 15 minutes of additional breaking news coverage. In addition 

to the daily local newscasts, KGO–TV also produces 2 local half-hour programs per 

week and a wide variety of local programs from sports shows to people profile shows 

to town hall meetings to ‘‘fun’’ events in the area. 

A truly unique community based effort of KGO–TV is ‘‘ABC–7 Listens,’’ an expansive effort to solicit viewers’ thoughts, opinions and news story ideas through feedback from contacting the station or through monthly town meetings. KGO is also 

known throughout the industry for its strong investigative unit, The I-Team, which 

regularly breaks big news stories in the market. They’re also known for their very 

strong consumer unit. Through ‘‘7 On Your Side,’’ a team of employees and volunteers solve thousands of consumer complaints every year and many consumer stories have led to legislative action. 

KTRK–TV Houston, Texas 

KTRK–TV, ABC–13, has long believed that local community involvement is core 

to the station’s overall market success. Annually the station strives to offer the best 

local news coverage as well as showcasing Houston’s unique special events. The 

most watched news station for over two decades, ABC–13 produces more regularly 

scheduled hours of news than any other Houston TV station—341⁄2 hours each week. 

ABC–13’s top newscasts are complimented by more special event programming 

than anywhere else. In 2003 alone, ABC–13 will produce more than 30 hours of special event programming and will be the only Houston television station providing 

live coverage of the Houston Marathon, Houston’s Rodeo Parade, The Rodeo’s scholarship fundraising art and steer auctions, and Houston’s 4th of July Concert and 

Fireworks. It will also once again produce and broadcast the Houston Texans four 

preseason NFL football games and a weekly half hour wrap-up show on Sundays 

during the NFL season. 

ABC–13’s contributions to the community extend beyond programming. ABC–13 

helped collect over 1,000,000 pounds of food and $50,000 in contributions to help 

feed hungry families last December during the station’s annual Holiday Food Drive. 

The station’s annual blood drive netted nearly 1,000 pints for the Houston Blood 

Center and their annual ‘‘Caring Cradles City Wide Baby Shower’’ brings in thousands of dollars worth of baby items for March of Dimes to distribute to families 

in need. 

WABC–TV New York, New York 

As the broadcaster of 28.5 hours of live, local news every week, WABC is the TriState’s largest TV news team and has the biggest live newsvan fleet. Daily local 

shows such as ‘‘7 On Your Side,’’ address the needs, interest and concerns of communities throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The WABC news 

team has recovered untold thousands of dollars for local consumers through solving 

legal problems and exposing countless frauds, scams and schemes. 

The station regularly organizes high-profile public service campaigns, reaching 

out to tri-state viewers and community organizations where the need is great and 

timely. Highlights of its numerous outreach activities include a schedule of about 

1,100 public service announcements each month. Employees at the station also volunteer in the community through station-organized efforts such as ‘‘Principal for a 

Day.’’ It has also held workshops such as a ‘‘Smarter Surfing’’ Internet workshop, 

offered to viewers and community groups free-of-charge. 

WABC–TV has a commitment to excellence built on the foundation of social responsibility. The station’s outreach efforts are linked to public service on and off the 

airwaves. Examples of WABC–TV’s commitment to public affairs programming and 

campaigns include ‘‘Like It Is,’’ a one-hour program that takes and in-depth look at 

various topics of concern on the tri-state areas African-American community and 

‘‘Operation 7: Save a Life,’’ a one-hour special focusing on the work of area fire fighters. 

56 

WJRT–TV Flint, Michigan 

WJRT–TV is the most watched television station in the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City, 

Michigan television market. The station has long been recognized as a community 

leader because of their commitment to support community organizations, not-forprofit agencies and local events of importance and interest to the people living in 

Mid-Michigan. 

Since ABC’s acquisition of WJRT in 1995, they have underwritten $10.8 million 

in technical and news gathering capital investments and $5.6 million in a building 

expansion and renovation. ABC has also invested $4.8 million in the new digital 

high definition transmission system (HDTV), making it the first and still the only 

Mid-Michigan television station to offer full HDTV service to Mid-Michigan viewers. 

Since 1995, WJRT has also added 19 half hours of news programming per week and 

daily broadcast four and one-half hours of local news. 

WJRT–TV also locally produces and broadcasts public affairs and special programming such as the ‘‘Life From a Teen’s Perspective’’ series and the Children’s 

Miracle Network Telethon. Employees of WJRT also have a personal commitment 

to the local community. Over the past two years, WJRT staff have served on more 

than 40 different boards and working committees, including United Way, American 

Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers and Big Sisters. The station also 

works to regularly support and participate in special events for not-for-profit agencies through on-air promotion, news interviews, serving as master of ceremonies and 

organizing volunteers. 

WLS–TV Chicago, Illinois 

Since March 1986, WLS–TV has dominated the Chicago local news market. From 

sign-on to sign-off, ABC7 is the most watched station in the market including all key 

newscasts. The station leads the market in local and breaking news coverage, as 

well as special local programming and community involvement. This is a direct result of their more than 30 hours of local news every week, broadcasting more than 

100 hours of local programming per year, running an average of 600 PSAs per year 

and offering direct financial support through cash donations to local community 

groups and charitable organizations. 

Converted in August 2002, WLS–TV now runs a fully digital, tapeless editing and 

playback system. The newscasts provide viewers with important local, national and 

international breaking news events as well as on-going coverage of local and state 

politics, weather and the day in sports. Additional information is also provided 

through special segments such as the daily ‘‘HealthBEAT’’ segment that provides 

perspective on medical breakthroughs and the latest health-related information 

available to Chicagoans. 

In addition to news, ABC7 produces more than 30 compelling, entertaining, and 

thoughtful local television programs for their viewers. The station broadcasts more 

than 100 hours of local specials per year, including the award-winning weekly program, ‘‘190 North’’ and the long-running ‘‘Chicagoing,’’ among many others. 

WTVD–TV Raleigh, North Carolina 

WTVD is an organization distinguished by dedication and responsiveness to its 

viewers and by a strong appreciation of the diversity within its community. WTVD’s 

hands-on public service projects, daily newscasts, and quality programming demonstrate it’s commitment on a daily basis. Serving 22 counties, WTVD’s Eyewitness 

News provides 4.5 hours of local newscasts daily Monday through Friday with one 

hour on Saturday and three hours on Sunday. It also frequently interrupts network 

and syndicated programming to broadcast bulletins on severe weather and local 

news. 

In addition to daily interaction with viewers by phone and e-mail, WTVD has developed a community outreach initiative called ‘‘Contact ABC 11’’ where the News 

Director, General Manager and other top managers of the station gather with viewers to listen to their thoughts, opinions and news story ideas. It also has extensive 

involvement with the community through a variety of service projects such as the 

‘‘ABC 11 Blood Drive’’ and ‘‘Best of the Class’’ where it produced and aired 30-second vignettes to recognize valedictorians from high schools in it’s viewing area. 

WTVD’s commitment to serve all segments of the community is evident through 

its work with the station’s Minority Advisory Committee. This committee consists 

of 15 African-American community leaders who meet bi-monthly with station management to share their thoughts and ideas. It has also established a Latino roundtable made up of 9 community leaders who share information and story ideas to ensure the station provides accurate, inclusive, and informative news and information 

to it’s viewers. 

57 

WTVG–TV Toledo, Ohio 

WTVG–TV provides more news, more local specials, more local sports, more community affairs, more local parades and has won more awards than any other station 

in town. Each week WTVG provides twenty-six and a half hours of regularly scheduled news—more than any other Toledo television station. It also frequently produces 

special reports on major breaking news stories and emergency weather information. 

This commitment has resulted in numerous prestigious awards including the 

RTNDA ‘‘Edward R. Murrow Award’’ for Outstanding News Operation. 

The station’s broadcasts often include exclusive investigative material that benefits the public. It has assisted people with consumer problems, identified dangers 

posed to the public through unscrupulous business practices and educated viewers 

about threats to public health. WTVG–TV has also assisted police as they search 

for criminal suspects or seek public help in solving crimes. Action News also gives 

viewers an opportunity to interact with guest experts on a daily basis during their 

noon news segment. Its commitment to responsible, complete and accurate coverage 

also includes the area’s only weekly community affairs program that features detailed discussions about local matters of public importance. 

WTVG’s commitment to the community goes beyond its coverage of news. Each 

year, it produces and broadcasts several specials addressing concerns of Northwest 

Ohio and Southeast Michigan and airs ‘‘fun events’’ such as the ‘‘Foodtown Holiday 

Parade and Preview’’ and the ‘‘Fiesta Championship Pregame.’’ WTVG also responds 

to local concerns by helping to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars through its 

annual broadcast of the 21-hour Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. It also brings 

viewers the annual Children’s Miracle Network Broadcast and educates viewers on 

how they can protect the environment through a station-wide campaign during April 

and May for Earth Day. 

WPVI–TV Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

WPVI–TV has been serving the Delaware Valley since 1947. The leading station 

in the region, Channel 6 continues to build on its long-standing commitment to local 

viewers through an emphasis on local news and information, public affairs, community projects and special local programming. 

Action News is the cornerstone of WPVI–TV’s commitment to the community. Encompassing thirty hours of local news every week, Action News is the leading news 

programs with it daily newscasts reaching an average of 1.4 million households per 

week. Along with its Philadelphia-based newsroom, Action News has three regional 

news bureaus to allow the most complete coverage of the tri-state area. These bureaus, and their studios, also serve as the sites for public service programs and debates relevant to that particular state. 

WPVI also continues to have one of the most active public affairs departments in 

the country, with a staff dedicated solely to producing local programming, public 

service announcements and regional specials. Examples of public affairs programming include ‘‘Prime Time Weekend,’’ a half hour magazine-format program addressing the positive aspects of a variety of topics and ‘‘Inside Story,’’ a weekly halfhour program featuring local opinion-leaders commenting on issues and events of 

the week. WPVI also has an equally strong commitment to public service announcements, airing approximately 100-150 PSAs every week. 

In addition to a commitment to public service initiatives, WPVI–TV has an equal 

dedication to broadcasting big events in the Delaware Valley, allowing all residents 

to have equal access to the shared traditions of the region. The greatest example 

of this is the annual Thanksgiving Parade, the longest running Thanksgiving Day 

parade in the Nation. On the verge of being lost to the city in 1986, this tradition 

was rescued by WPVI, which now produces the parade, as well as broadcasts it, live 

every Thanksgiving morning. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Dean Kaplan. 

STATEMENT OF DEAN MARTIN KAPLAN, DIRECTOR, USC 

ANNENBERG NORMAN LEAN CENTER AND ASSOCIATE DEAN, 

USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION 

Mr. KAPLAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to testify here today. My name is Martin Kaplan. I’m the Associate Dean 

of the Annenberg School for Communication at USC, and my comments this morning, while they report on academic research, also 

draw on experience in the trenches of politics, news, and entertainVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
58 

ment. I spent 8 years here in Washington, where I was chief speech 

writer to Vice President and then Presidential candidate Walter 

Mondale, so I know something from the candidate’s point of view 

about how hard it is to earn media coverage on television. I’ve also 

had stints as a journalist, in print, on television and radio, and for 

12 years I worked at the Walt Disney Company as an Executive 

Screenwriter and Producer, so I also know something from the 

communication company’s point of view about the need to compete 

in the marketplace. 

Today, most Americans say they get most of their news from 

local television. Is local TV news providing voters the information 

they need to know? A broadcast license is a contract between media 

owners and the public. Serving the public interest does not mean 

maximizing profit, however happy that may make owners and 

shareholders. Nor does it mean sponsoring charity benefits or blood 

drives, however happy that may make communities. Serving the 

public interest, as the Supreme Court said in Red Lion, means that 

the broadcaster must give adequate coverage to public issues. 

That’s what media owners promise in exchange for their licenses. 

Since 1998, my colleagues and I have been studying campaign 

and election coverage on local television. In the 2000 campaign, we 

studied all the programming from 5 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., the interval, Senator McCain, in the bill you’ll be introducing, to look for 

candidate discourse, and we did that in 58 markets, and what we 

discovered was that the average amount of candidate discourse on 

stations in this country was 74 seconds, all candidates, dog-catcher 

to President, put together. 

In 2002, we set out to learn how much and what kind of election 

news most Americans were actually exposed to. We recorded and 

analyzed more than 10,000 top-rated early and late evening halfhour news broadcasts on 122 stations in the top 50 U.S. media 

markets over the 7 weeks leading up to Election Day. Again, we 

counted all races at all levels. 

What did we find? This is how well the current marketplace is 

doing. Almost 6 out of 10 top-rated news broadcasts contained no 

campaign coverage whatsoever. Most of the campaign stories that 

did air were broadcast during the last 2 weeks of the campaign. 

Nearly half the stories that aired were about horse race and strategy, and not about issues. The average campaign story was less 

than 90 seconds. Fewer than 3 out of 10 campaign stories included 

candidates speaking. The average sound bite was 12 seconds. 

Even when counting U.S. House races as local elections, only 14 

percent of all the campaign stories in our sample focused on local 

races, races for the State legislature, 3 percent, regional, county, or 

city elections, 4 percent, and campaign ads outnumbered campaign 

stories by nearly 4 to 1, so while there are some encouraging exceptions, most local stations largely ignored the 2002 campaign on 

their top-rated broadcasts. 

At the same time, those stations took in a recordbreaking $1 billion of political advertising revenue. Among the 122 stations we 

studied, there’s a wide range of performance. For example, 10 stations covered no local races at all during their top-rated half-hours. 

Five stations devoted more than half their political coverage to 

local ratings. 

59 

What explains disparities like these? They can’t be attributed to 

differing local appetites for public issues, because these stations 

can exist side by side. In Greenville, South Carolina, for example, 

WSPA, a Media General station, aired 146 campaign stories at the 

top end of our country in our sample, while WLOS, the Sinclair 

station, aired 40. The average candidate sound bite at the Sinclair 

Station was 7 seconds, which put it in the bottom 10 percent of our 

national sample, while the Media General sound bite averaged 36 

seconds, at the top of the country. 

Does ownership make a difference? Our sample wasn’t designed 

to study that, but it does include stations with large owners, medium owners, and small owners, and you can make a comparison 

of them. What we discovered when we did that was that large owners in our study carried a lower percentage of local campaign news 

than the national average, while the small and midsized owners 

carried a higher percentage. 

What causes stations to excel? A commitment by ownership leaders can count for a lot, as demonstrated by the 10 Hearst-Argyle 

stations in our study, which were impressively head of the pack, 

and the priorities of individual station managers and news directors can also make a difference, but across the country, the murderous pressure for ratings has largely trumped every other goal. 

Politics is ratings poison. This belief, which apparently does not 

extend to the airing of paid political ads, is promoted by the television news consulting industry, whose advice dominates local decisions. In my view, these consultants are selling dangerous nonsense. Good reporters working for good managers can make politics 

and public affairs just as compelling to audience as news about celebrity crimes or teasers for prime time voyeurism. Let’s not blame 

the audience for what appears on local television. 

Programmers aren’t just delivering what people want, they are 

accomplices in manufacturing that desire. Americans aren’t just 

consumers. We’re also citizens. Broadcasters have more than an obligation to make money and win Nielsen wars. They have an obligation to inform us about public issues. That’s what they promise 

in order to get their licenses. Today, the ability of Americans to get 

the information they need from the sources they turn to most about 

some of the most important choices they face, that ability depends 

on a marketing culture that puts sensationalism ahead of substance and dollars head of democracy. Surely Americans deserve 

better from the industry they’ve entrusted with the airwaves, and 

from the agency they’ve entrusted with monitoring it. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kaplan follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DEAN MARTIN KAPLAN, DIRECTOR, USC ANNENBERG

NORMAN LEAN CENTER AND ASSOCIATE DEAN, USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR

COMMUNICATION

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to testify. The question I want to 

try to answer today is this: Under current legislation and current FCC regulations, 

what kind of job are local television stations doing in fulfilling their public interest 

obligations? 

More than two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson said that the strength of our democracy would depend on how well-informed the American electorate is. Today, 

most Americans say they get most of their information from local television news. 

Is local TV news actually telling voters what they need to know? How well are local 

60 

broadcasters living up to the public interest promises they made in order to get 

their licenses? 

My answer to these questions is based on academic research. My academic background includes a summa cum laude from Harvard College, a graduate degree from 

Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from Stanford. I’m now associate dean of the 

Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, one of our Nation’s leading schools of communication and journalism. 

But I have experience in three other realms that also bear on my testimony. 

My professional background includes eight years here in Washington, where I was 

chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter F. Mondale, and also his deputy presidential campaign manager. So I know something from the candidate’s point of view 

about the challenges of earning media coverage on television. 

I’ve also had stints in print and broadcast journalism. I’ve been a columnist, feature writer, and editor at The Washington Star; a regular contributor to All Things 

Considered and Marketplace on public radio; and a commentator on the CBS Morning News. My career also includes the entertainment industry. For twelve years I 

worked at the Walt Disney Studios, both as a senior motion picture executive, and 

as a screenwriter and producer. I believe that entertainment—the need to grab and 

hold audiences—has come to dominate every other realm of contemporary American 

life, for better and for worse, from news and politics to education and religion. 

Studying the impact of entertainment on society is the mission of the Annenberg 

School’s Norman Lear Center, which I direct. 

So my comments this morning, while they report on empirical research I’ve done, 

also reflect some first-hand experience in the trenches of politics, journalism, and 

show business. 

Since the Radio Act of 1927, the possession of a broadcast license has been a contract between media owners and the public. In order to use the electromagnetic 

spectrum, which belongs to the public, the broadcaster promises to serve the public 

interest. From then to now, serving the public interest does not mean maximizing 

profit, however happy that may make owners and shareholders. Nor does it mean 

sponsoring charity benefits or street fairs, however happy that may make communities. Serving the public interest, as the Supreme Court said in Red Lion v. FCC, 

means that ‘‘[t]he broadcaster must give adequate coverage to public issues.’’ Giving 

adequate coverage to public issues is what media owners promise the public to do 

in exchange for getting their licenses. 

Since 1998, my colleague Dr. Matthew Hale and I have been investigating what 

kind of attention broadcasters have been paying to public issues. In particular, 

we’ve been looking at the quantity and quality of campaign and election coverage 

on local television. 

This research is not a snap to do. Broadcasters are not required to keep tapes of 

their news programming or time logs of what they cover. Under current FCC regulations, all that stations must do is maintain in their offices ‘‘a list of programs that 

have provided their most significant treatment of community issues.’’ These lists are 

next to useless for empirical research. The FCC’s single study of ‘‘The Measurement 

of Local Television News and Public Affairs Programs’’ under its current ownership 

rulemaking illustrates this inadequacy. FCC researchers watched not one minute of 

local news or public affairs programming. Instead, they simply added up the raw 

number of minutes that stations labeled news or public affairs on their broadcast 

schedules. No matter that anyone who has actually watched local news knows how 

much of it is given over to empty happy talk, cross-promotion of network entertainment, and coverage of serial murders half a continent away. No matter that much 

public affairs programming airs not when ratings are high, but when only 

insomniacs are watching. As a proxy for quality, FCC researchers counted the number of awards given by members of an industry trade group, the Radio and Television News Directors Association, to itself, and by a journalism school (the DuPont 

Silver Batons at Columbia). If more industry votes go to network owned-and-operated stations than to other stations, does that really make the O&O’s better? Threequarters of the Silver Batons the FCC counted went to individual reporters and producers for individual pieces, not to stations, and all the awards to stations were 

given for specific stories. If the DuPont jurors aren’t pretending to compare the 

quality of one station’s total news programming with another, why should the FCC? 

Yet this is the study that the FCC Chairman frequently cites as justification for lifting the ownership caps. 

In fact the only way to conduct scientific research on the content of local news 

and public affairs coverage is to get people in each market being studied to record 

that programming, or to purchase it from commercial vendors, and then to have analysts log and code every single broadcast. That’s what we’ve been doing. 

61 

This is the third nationwide study we have conducted. In 2000, we studied local 

news campaign coverage both in the primaries and in the general election. That research, funded by the Ford Foundation, came in the wake of the recommendation 

of the Presidential Advisory Commission on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters, co-chaired by CBS president Leslie Moonves and American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norm Ornstein. Their proposal was a voluntary five minutes of candidate-centered discourse on each station, on each night 

between 5 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., for the last 30 days before each election. To see how 

that voluntary standard was working on selected stations, we taped all news coverage between those times in the month before Election Day. We counted candidatecentered discourse under a generous definition, which included issue-centered stories, and we counted all candidates for all offices at every level, dogcatcher to president. 

We did the study twice—in the primaries, and in the general election. In the primaries, we studied 19 top-rated stations in 11 markets around the country. Two 

groups of stations emerged. Typical stations—16 of the 19—aired an average of just 

39 seconds of candidate discourse a night. Only three stations aired over 3 minutes 

a night, and two of them included New Hampshire in their markets. (The study can 

be found at http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/tvnews.pdf.) 

During the 2000 general election, we expanded our sample to include 74 stations 

in 58 markets. Twenty-three of those stations had made a public commitment to the 

voluntary five-minute standard; we found that they aired an average of 2 minutes 

and 17 seconds of candidate discourse a night. The remaining 51 stations, which 

had been silent on the voluntary standard, aired an average of 45 seconds of candidate discourse a night. All candidates, all races, all evening, all month: 45 seconds 

a night. (The study can be found at http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/campaign 

news.pdf.) 

By 2002, the five-minute-a-night voluntary goal had all but disappeared from discussion. The public interest obligation has today essentially been entrusted to an 

unregulated and unmonitored market. So in this most recent campaign, we set out 

to learn how much and what kind of election news most Americans were actually 

exposed to in that marketplace. Our research was funded by the Pew Charitable 

Trusts, and done in collaboration with Professor Ken Goldstein of the University of 

Wisconsin-Madison. (Our report can be found at www.localnewsarchive.org/pdf/ 

LocalTV2002.pdf.) 

We recorded and analyzed more than 10,000 top-rated early-and late-evening halfhour news broadcasts on 122 stations in the top 50 U.S. media markets over the 

seven weeks leading up to Election Day. This representative national sample is the 

most ambitious quantitative study of local news coverage of politics ever undertaken. Not only were the stories logged and coded; those video clips have also been 

archived online on a unique searchable database, at www.localnewsarchive.org, 

which is now available to any registered user. 

Here is some of what we found in 2002. This is the how well the marketplace is 

actually doing at fulfilling the public interest obligation of broadcasters: 

• Only 44 percent of the more than 10,000 broadcasts we studied contained any 

campaign coverage at all. In other words, almost six out of ten top-rated news 

broadcasts contained no campaign coverage whatsoever. 

• Most of the campaign stories that did air were broadcast during the last two 

weeks of the campaign. 

• Nearly half of the stories that aired were about horse race or strategy, and not 

about issues. 

• The average campaign story was less than 90 seconds. 

• Fewer than three out of ten campaign stories that aired included candidates 

speaking, and when they did speak, the average candidate sound bite was 12 

seconds long. 

• Even when counting U.S. House races as local elections, only 14 percent of all 

the campaign stories in our sample focused on local races. Races for the state 

legislature only accounted for three percent of the stories, and stories focused 

on regional, county or city offices made up only four percent of the stories. 

• Campaign ads outnumbered campaign stories by nearly four to one. While little 

more than four out of ten of the broadcasts analyzed contained at least one campaign news story, eight out of ten of those broadcasts contained at least one 

campaign ad. Just seven percent of the broadcasts analyzed contained three or 

more campaign news stories, while almost half of these same broadcasts contained three or more campaign ads. 

62 

So what kind of job are local stations doing to fulfill the public interest promises 

they made when they applied for their licenses? If you look at the campaign coverage they provided in 2002, the answer is grim. While there are some encouraging 

exceptions, most local television stations largely ignored the 2002 campaign on most 

of their top-rated broadcasts. At the same time, those stations took in a recordbreaking billion dollars of political advertising revenue. It is striking that while general managers and news directors often fret that covering politics may be an audience turnoff, they have no compunctions about barraging that same audience with 

political ads. 

Among the 122 stations we studied in 2002, there is of course a wide range of 

performance. Some stations aired a campaign story on less than 20 percent of their 

top-rated half-hours; other stations had campaign stories on more than 70 percent 

of those broadcasts. Some stations spent only 1 percent of this most-watched news 

time on campaigns; other stations spent as much as 9 percent. On some stations, 

an average campaign story was well over two minutes long; on other stations, it was 

just 40 seconds. Ten stations covered no local races at all during their top-rated 

half-hours; five stations devoted more than half their political coverage to local 

races. One station’s average candidate sound bites were over half a minute long; another station’s sound bites averaged just 4 seconds. One station ran no stories about 

issues; on another station, 75 percent of the campaign stories were about issues or 

adwatches. 

What explains disparities like these? 

They can’t be attributed to differing local appetites for the coverage of public 

issues, because these station differences can exist side by side in the same communities. In Greenville, South Carolina, for example, WSPA, a Media General station, 

aired 146 campaign stories on their top-rated early and late half hours of news during the seven weeks before Election Day, at the top end of the country in our sample, while WLOS, a Sinclair station, aired 40. The average candidate sound bite on 

the Sinclair station in Greenville was 7 seconds long, which put it in the bottom 

10 percent of our national sample, while the Media General station candidate sound 

bite averaged 36 seconds, at the top of the country. 

Does ownership make a difference in campaign coverage? Our 122-station sample 

wasn’t designed to study that. But our sample does include 45 stations owned by 

large owners (with audience reach above 20 percent, based on percentage of U.S. 

household coverage as calculated by the FCC, discounting UHF coverage by 50 percent), 54 owned by mid-sized owners (audience reach between 20 percent and 6.2 

percent), and 23 by small owners (audience reach below 6.2 percent). It turns out 

that the large owners in our study carried a lower percentage of local campaign 

news than the national average, while the small and mid-sized owners carried a 

higher percentage of local stories. The same pattern appears in individual media 

markets: in 16 of the 22 markets where we can make the comparison, stations with 

small or mid-sized owners provided more coverage of local elections than stations 

with large owners. If a national study designed to correlate ownership with localism 

came up with similar numbers, it would have inescapable implications for the regulations now in play. 

What causes some stations to excel? My school is proud to award the USC 

Annenberg Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Coverage, 

and the journalists and stations that win it prove what good work can be done. In 

our study, some stations, even in the absence of contested political races, nevertheless did a top-tier job of offering campaign coverage to their viewers. A commitment 

by ownership-group leaders to fulfill their public interest obligations can count for 

a lot, as demonstrated by the ten Hearst-Argyle stations in our study, which were 

impressively ahead of the pack. The priorities of individual station managers and 

news directors can also make a difference, as can making the financial commitment 

of assigning experienced producers and talented correspondents to cover a political 

beat. 

But the sad truth is that across the country, the murderous pressure for ratings 

has largely trumped every other goal. The conventional wisdom among general managers and news directors is that politics is ratings poison. This belief—that public 

issues are boring, that viewers would rather watch car chases than candidates—is 

promoted by the television news consulting industry whose advice dominates local 

programming decisions. In my view, those consultants are selling dangerous nonsense. The truth is that good reporters working for good managers can make politics 

and public affairs just as compelling to audiences as news about celebrity divorces 

or teasers for prime-time voyeurism. 

Let’s not blame the audience for what appears on local television. Programmers 

aren’t just delivering what people want. They are accomplices in manufacturing that 

desire. Americans aren’t just consumers; we are also citizens. Broadcasters have 

63 

more than an obligation to make money. They have an obligation to inform us. 

That’s what they promise in order to get their licenses. Today, the enforcement of 

that promise is alarmingly inadequate. Right now the ability of the American people 

to get the information they need, from the sources they turn to most, about the most 

important choices they make together as citizens: today that ability depends on a 

marketing culture that too often puts sensationalism ahead of substance, fear ahead 

of reason, and dollars ahead of democracy. Surely Americans deserve better from 

the industry they’ve entrusted with their airwaves, and from the agency they’ve entrusted with monitoring it. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dean Kaplan. Mr. Bozell. 

STATEMENT OF L. BRENT BOZELL III, PRESIDENT AND 

FOUNDER, PARENTS TELEVISION COUNCIL 

Mr. BOZELL. Chairman McCain, Senator Hollings, and Members 

of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you 

to testify on this important issue. Today, I represent the Parents 

Television Council’s 800,000 members, and untold millions of parents who, like me, are disgusted, revolted, fed up, horrified—I don’t 

know how to underscore this point strongly enough—by the raw 

sewage, the ultraviolence, graphic sex, and raunchy language that 

is flooding into our living rooms night and day by media, by giant 

media corporations with no concerns whatsoever for community 

standards. 

That’s why I strongly support the effort to return the media ownership cap to 35 percent. Citizens not only have a right, but also 

have a need to have a voice in their local communities. 

In 1989, the Big Three networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS, held a 

17 percent ownership share in TV programming. By 2002, it had 

increased to 48 percent. Now add Fox, AOL-Time Warner, and 

AT&T Liberty, and these six megacorporations today control twothirds of all viewers on television. 

Let’s be clear here. Further deregulation will give them even further control of the airwaves, and the losers are the local communities whose standards of decency are being ignored, completely ignored by these media giants. There will be the same old tired 

voices that will say that this is only about competition, but let’s be 

clear on this, there is no competition here. You can’t compete 

against multibillion dollar oligopolies. 

There are many reasons not to give these six megacorporations 

even more control of our airwaves. One of them, which is what I’d 

like to speak on, is their utter lack of attentiveness to community 

standards. In the last year, the PTC has sent out over 1.5 million 

community standard audits, of which 128,000 have been returned. 

The numbers speak for themselves. 94.2 percent of the public believes there shouldn’t be graphic violence during children’s viewing 

time. 94.3 percent are against descriptions of sexual encounters on 

television. 94.6 percent are opposed to strong sexual language during children’s viewing times. These are no-brainers, but guess 

what, all these things can be found on television courtesy of these 

six megacorporations. They could care less who they offend, and 

now want even more control of the airwaves, where they can offend 

even more. 

This is a First Amendment issue. It’s about the right of citizens 

to speak up about what they want coming across the broadcast airVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
64 

waves they own in their local communities, where their voice 

should count the most, without being silenced by the corporate executives in New York and Los Angeles. This is how the networks 

feel about local community standards. 

In a PTC survey of network-owned and operated affiliates, not 

one told us it had willingly ever preempted network programming 

on the basis of community standards. Some told us that because of 

network contractual obligations, they could not preempt network 

programming. In fact, some Fox and CBS affiliates said they 

weren’t even allowed to see the advance copies of reality programming they were going to have to put on television. 

When NBC aired Maxim’s Top 100, which Senator Hollings referred to, 26 independent NBC affiliates chose not to telecast the 

program that many believe bordered on the pornographic and 

which was certainly not in keeping with the community standards, 

and yet not one NBC owned and operated affiliate preempted it 

based on community standards. In a 43-page petition brought to 

the FCC on behalf of more than 600 affiliates nationwide, the Network Affiliate Stations Alliance, NASA, complained that under virtually every current affiliation agreement, an affiliate risked losing 

its affiliation if it preempts more than a few hours of network programming without approval. The president of NASA said this: We 

are partners with the networks, but we cannot stand by and let 

them control our local stations. We know what works best for our 

local communities, and by law these decisions cannot be made in 

Hollywood or New York. 

Now ask those New York or Hollywood media behemoths how 

important the issue of indecency is to them. I wonder if you’ll find 

one executive—I don’t know of one—who will even speak out about 

it publicly, much less do anything to stop it. 

Consider Keen Eddie, a new show on the Fox Entertainment 

Network, which aired on June 10 at 9 p.m. I don’t mean to offend— 

Senator Dorgan brought this up. I don’t mean to offend, but you 

must know what is being broadcast over the public airways to millions of impressionable children, perhaps your own children or your 

own grandchildren in their living rooms. 

Keen Eddie featured a plot about a band of thugs trafficking in 

horse semen and hiring a prostitute to perform a sex act with a 

horse so as to extract the semen from it. Here’s the actual dialogue. 

Prostitute: No, that’s not natural. 

Thug: Extraction for insemination? If you look at the picture 

on page 45, you’ll see how natural it is. 

Second Thug: You’re a 40-year-old filthy slut. You’ll do anything. 

Prostitute: With a human. 

But the prostitute agrees to go through with it, except the horse 

suddenly drops dead, at which point she says, ‘‘I never laid a finger 

on it. I lifted up my blouse, that’s all. He needs to get aroused.’’ 

A horse, on national television, in front of millions of impressionable children, over the public airwaves, into the family home, the 

one place, according to the Supreme Court, quote, ‘‘where people ordinarily have the right not to be assaulted by uninvited and offense 

sights and sounds.’’ 

65 

Chairman Powell has called it, quote-unquote, ‘‘garbage that anyone would suggest the FCC cares as little about community concerns as the networks it’s meant to be monitoring.’’ Well, let’s see 

about that. Over 10,500 complaints were sent to the FCC about 

Keen Eddie. Now, it’s actually 11,000. I’ve got the numbers right 

here, and the names. 11,000 complaints. Not one person, to my 

knowledge, has heard back, not one. Now, this show aired on June 

10. How long does it take to decide that this is indecent? Apparently, they’re still debating it. 

And guess how many stations the FCC has fined for indecent 

broadcasting in the history of the FCC in the continental U.S.? Answer, not a single one. In other words, according to the FCC nothing, but nothing on television has ever been indecent. You’d be 

hard-pressed to find a parent anywhere in America to agree with 

that assessment. It’s not garbage to say that the FCC doesn’t care 

and is not doing its job. There are some in the FCC who are trying, 

but they are the minority. You heard one of them, Commissioner 

Copps, today. 

It’s my fervent hope that Congress will tell the FCC that it will 

not permit its Pontius Pilate-like decisions to allow these media titans, who have so badly abused their privilege to broadcast on the 

public airwaves, even more access to them. It’s my further hope 

that the Congress will demand that the FCC instead start doing its 

job. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bozell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF L. BRENT BOZELL III, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER, 

PARENTS TELEVISION COUNCIL

Chairman McCain, Senator Hollings and Members of the Committee, I appreciate 

the opportunity to appear before you to testify on this important issue. 

Today I represent the Parents Television Council’s 800,000 members, and untold 

millions of parents who, like me, are disgusted, revolted, fed up, horrified—I don’t 

know how to underscore this enough—by the raw sewage, ultra violence, graphic 

sex, and raunchy language that is flooding into our living rooms night and day by 

giant media corporations with no concerns whatsoever for community standards. 

That’s why I strongly support the effort to return the media ownership cap to 35 

percent. Citizens not only have a right but also a need to have a voice in their local 

communities. 

In 1989 the Big Three networks—NBC, ABC, and CBS—held a 17 percent ownership share of TV programming. By 2002 it had increased to 48 percent. Now add 

Fox, AOL/Time Warner, and AT&T/Liberty, and these six megacorporations today 

control two-thirds of all viewers on television. Let’s be clear here: further deregulation will give them even further control of the airwaves. And the losers are the local 

communities whose standards of decency are being ignored, completely ignored, by 

these media giants. There will be the same old tired voices that will say this is 

about competition. Lets be clear on this—there is NO competition here. You can’t 

compete against multi-billion dollar oligopolies. 

There are many reasons not to give these six megacorporations even more control 

of our airwaves, one of them being their utter lack of attentiveness to community 

standards. In the last year the PTC has sent out over 1.5 million community standard audits, of which over 128,000 have been returned. The numbers speak for themselves: 94.2 percent believe there shouldn’t be graphic violence during children’s 

viewing time, 94.3 percent are against descriptions of sexual encounters, and 94.6 

percent are opposed to strong sexual language during children’s viewing times. 

Guess what? All these things can now be found on television, courtesy of these six 

megacorporations. They could care less who they offend and now want even more 

control of the airwaves where they can offend even more. 

This is a first amendment issue. It’s about the right of citizens to speak up about 

what they want coming across the broadcast airwaves they own, in their local comVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
66 

munities, where their voice should count the most, without being silenced by corporate executives in New York and Los Angeles. 

This is how the networks feel about local community standards. In a PTC survey 

of network owned-and-operated affiliates, not one told us it had willingly preempted 

network programming on the basis of community standards. Some told us that because of network contractual obligations, they could not preempt network programming. In fact, some Fox and CBS affiliates said they weren’t allowed to see advance 

copies of reality programming. 

When NBC aired Maxim’s Top 100, 26 independent NBC affiliates chose not to 

telecast the program that many believed bordered on the pornographic and which 

was certainly not in keeping with their community standards. And yet not one NBC 

owned and operated affiliate preempted it based on community standards. 

In a 43-page petition brought to the FCC on behalf of more than 600 affiliates 

nationwide, the Network Affiliated Stations Alliance (NASA) complained that under 

virtually every current affiliation agreement, an affiliate risks losing its affiliation 

if it preempts more than a few hours of network programming without approval. 

The president of NASA said, ‘‘We are partners with the networks, but we cannot 

stand by and let them control our local stations. We know what works best for our 

local communities, and by law those decisions cannot be made in Hollywood or New 

York.’’ 

Now ask those New York and Hollywood media behemoths how important the 

issue of indecency is to them. I wonder if you will find one executive—I don’t know 

of a one—who will even speak out about it publicly, much less do a thing to stop 

it. 

Consider Keen Eddie, a new show on the Fox entertainment network which aired 

on June 10, at 9:00 p.m. I don’t mean to offend, but you must know what is being 

broadcast over the public airwaves to millions of impressionable children—perhaps 

your own children—in their living rooms. Keen Eddie featured a plot about a band 

of thugs trafficking in horse semen and hiring a prostitute to perform a sex act with 

a horse, so as to extract the semen from it. 

Here is the actual dialogue: 

Prostitute: ‘‘No, that’s not natural!’’ 

Thug: ‘‘Extraction for insemination. If you look at the picture on page 45 you’ll 

see how natural it is.’’ 

Second Thug: ‘‘You’re a 40-year-old filthy slut, you’ll do anything.’’ 

Prostitute: ‘‘With a human.’’ 

But the prostitute agrees to go through with it, except the horse suddenly drops 

dead, at which point she says, ‘‘I never laid a finger on it. I lifted up my blouse, 

that’s all . . . He needs to get aroused.’’ 

On national television. To millions of impressionable children. Over the public airwaves, into the family home, ‘‘The one place,’’ according to the Supreme Court, 

‘‘where people ordinarily have the right not to be assaulted by uninvited and offensive sights and sounds.’’ 

Chairman Powell has called it ‘‘garbage’’ that anyone would suggest the FCC 

cares as little about community concerns as the networks it is meant to be monitoring. Let’s see about that. 

Over 10,500 complaints were sent to the FCC about the Keen Eddie sewage. Not 

one person, to my knowledge, has heard back. Not one. And guess how many stations the FCC has fined in the continental United States for airing indecency in the 

entire history of the FCC? Are you ready? Not a single one. In other words, according to the FCC, nothing, but nothing, on television has ever been indecent. You 

would be hard pressed to find a parent anywhere in America to agree with that assessment. It is NOT ‘‘garbage’’ to say the FCC doesn’t care and is not doing its job. 

There are some at the FCC who are trying to do their job regarding the filth coming across our airwaves, but as a whole, this Commission has failed. 

It is my fervent hope that Congress will tell the FCC that it will not permit its 

Pontius Pilate-like decision to allow these media titans—who have so badly abused 

their privilege to broadcast on the public airwaves—even more access to them. It 

is my further hope that the Congress will demand that the FCC start doing its job. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Bozell. 

Mr. Davis, have you ever preempted network programming because you didn’t believe it met your community standards? 

Mr. DAVIS. If you’re talking about an entire entertainment programming, not since I’ve been general manager in 1997. We have 

67 

asked on occasion and received from the network if they had copies 

to look at in their discussions about certain scenes—— 

The CHAIRMAN. My question was, have you ever preempted network programming because you didn’t believe it met your community standards, yes or no? 

Mr. DAVIS. No. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

As general manager, how do you decide whether Disney’s programming meets Philadelphia’s community standards? 

Mr. DAVIS. Well, we obviously serve a very large community. We 

have 2.8 million homes. As Mr. Hollings—— 

The CHAIRMAN. My question is, how do you determine whether 

it meets Philadelphia’s community standards? 

Mr. DAVIS. Based on my 13 years of living there, working there, 

raising my family there, talking to people in the community, which 

I avail myself—I answer every piece of mail, every phone call, 

every e-mail from viewers, we have a Community Advisory Board 

that I talked about, I’m on boards of four or five nonprofit organizations involved in the community, I encourage other employees to do 

the same thing, we tend to hire people who are part of the community, who stay there. We have a very stable workforce and work 

very hard to reflect the community. 

I don’t operate the station in how I personally, my own personal 

standards and tastes. Those would be rather narrow, compared to 

our total audience, so I try to operate in such a way as to give the 

viewers the benefit of the doubt, to choose the programming that 

they want to watch. We are very careful. If we don’t think the network has done a good enough job of notifying people ahead of time 

about some content within the shows, we do that ourselves. 

I remember when NYPD Blue started, we got a lot of concern 

ahead of time before it even aired, from interest groups, from citizens. We responded to all those complaints. We looked at the episodes ahead of time, talked to the networks, and after it aired, we 

have yet to receive any large complaints about the quality of that 

show. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Davis. 

Mr. Faber, Sinclair’s CEO, David Smith, is quoted in the article 

in the Washington Post dated May 31 as stating, and I quote, ‘‘if 

I go into the marketplace with an old-line view of how to do news, 

I don’t see how it works. The first analysis is the business analysis. 

The second one is, how does what we’re doing serve the public?’’ 

How in the world do you justify a statement like that, Mr. Faber, 

when you are receiving the spectrum for free, and you are committing in writing to serve in the public interest? How do you justify 

a statement, the first analysis is the business analysis? We’re talking about news now. According to Mr. Smith, if I go into the marketplace with an old-line view of how to do news, I don’t see how 

it works. The first analysis is the business analysis—of news. The 

second one is, how does what we’re doing serve the public? 

Mr. FABER. Well, I think that our view is that generally those 

two goals are very compatible with one another. Typically, serving 

the public interest leads to better viewership, which we leads to, 

you know, the business running better. We find them very compatible goals. 

68 

The CHAIRMAN. But that’s not what Mr. Smith said. That’s a 

wonderful response, but it’s not what Mr. Smith said. 

Mr. Smith says, if I go into the marketplace with an old line view 

of how to do news, I don’t see how it works. The first analysis is 

the business analysis. The second one is, how does what we’re 

doing serve the public, and the reason why I ask that is because 

you’ve done really incredible things with local news, having the 

broadcaster dress up and say, here we are in—I’ve forgotten, I’ll 

find it here—weatherman Vigus Reed is bundled in a black overcoat and plaid muffler as he delivers a frigid forecast on Fox 66 in 

Flint, Michigan. Although he was forecasting for Central Michigan, 

Reed was actually hundreds of miles away in a TV studio north of 

Baltimore. Is that how you make it business work first? 

Why don’t you have a local weatherman at these stations, Mr. 

Faber? That’s localism at its best. 

Mr. FABER. I’m not sure I agree with that. I mean, a local weatherman at a television station typically is relying on weather data 

that’s provided from a weather service that’s not located in his 

market. 

The CHAIRMAN. Sometimes he’s relying on somebody like Senator 

Dorgan says who is out there outside, watching the weather. 

Mr. FABER. And in every market where we do news we have local 

people in that market. We’re not simply sitting in Baltimore doing 

the news from there. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have local weather people in that market? 

Mr. FABER. No, we don’t, but if you can let me answer the question, the weather person is in contact every day with the people in 

that station, so to the extent that weather people need the reality 

check of looking outside and seeing what the weather’s like, that 

reality check goes on every single day. 

The data that they use to predict the weather and do their 

weather report is, as I said, it’ s not coming from that market. It’s 

coming from a National Weather Service that is located in another 

market, and we use the exact same data in Baltimore. 

The other thing that’s important to remember with a company 

like Sinclair, of the 62 television stations that we own or provide 

services to, 46 of them, I believe, are affiliated with the Fox, WB, 

or UPN networks, and two of them are independent, so 48 of our 

62 stations that we either own or provide services to are not Big 

Three affiliates. It is very difficult to justify having a weather person at a television station when you’re going to have 1 hour of 

news a day. It’s very different—as Mr. Davis said, they have 30 

hours a week on a Big Three affiliate so they can afford to have 

somebody doing weather, because they’re doing 4–1/2 hours of news 

a day. 

The only way we can even make this work economically, typically, is to have an hour of news a day, to give people a choice an 

hour earlier from the normal network news, which airs at 11 East 

Coast Time or 10 Central, and we air news typically on those stations, the Fox–WB–UPN stations, at 10 or 9 Central, and that’s the 

only news we do during the day. It’s too expensive. 

The CHAIRMAN. The New York Times quotes Scott Paget, a Sinclair anchor located in Baltimore, stating, there will be a high of 

69 

57 for us here in Flint, during a broadcast submitted to Sinclair’s 

Flint station. 

Mr. Kaplan states, in his testimony, that the Media General station in Greenville, South Carolina aired 146 campaign stories 7 

weeks before Election Day, compared to the Sinclair station in that 

same community that aired 40 stories. 

Dean Kaplan also stated the average candidate sound bite on the 

Sinclair station in Greenville was 70 seconds, which places that 

station in the bottom 10 percent of the national sample, where the 

Media General station candidate sound bite averaged 36 seconds. 

Would you like to respond to that finding? 

Mr. FABER. Well, it’s difficult to respond because I haven’t looked 

at the facts of all of our stations. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just gave you the facts. 

Mr. FABER. Well, you’ve given me one station. 

The CHAIRMAN. Would you like to respond to that station? 

Mr. FABER. Well, that station, just so you know, is not a News 

Central station, so it has nothing to do with the News Central operations, and no, it’s a decision that’s made by the local news director there as to how to best serve the needs of this community. 

The CHAIRMAN. Does Sinclair broadcast any public affairs shows 

in its local stations, such as Mr. Davis’ station does? 

Mr. FABER. I don’t have a list of them. Some of our stations do 

present public affairs programming. 

The CHAIRMAN. Please provide us a list for the benefit of the 

Committee. I thank you. My time has expired. 

Senator Hollings. 

Senator HOLLINGS. What is a News Central station, because I 

know those stations. LOS is up in Asheville. It covers the Greenville—actually, SPA is over in Spartanburg. It covers the Greenville area, but what do you mean—the excuse you gave, it wasn’t 

a News Central station. What does that mean? 

Mr. FABER. Well, it wasn’t intended as an excuse. It was just 

simply that I was talking about News Central, and I wanted to 

make clear that that station was not News Central. 

What a News Central station is, is a station that has a locally 

based group of reporters and producers and a news director focusing solely on local news in that community. Then they also present 

as part of their news programming when they go to the national 

and international news, that comes out of a central location in Baltimore. 

So for example, just to give you an example, I watched last 

night—I went to our station in Baltimore. I watched them produce 

it. I also watched on a computer the news coming from each of our 

different News Central stations. We currently have six of them, I 

believe, and in Flint, Michigan, which never had news before, it 

starts out, there is a local person in Flint, Michigan reporting on 

the day’s events in Flint, Michigan and the surrounding area. 

At the same time, in Rochester, New York, there is a local Rochester-based anchor, and as well as Rochester and Flint-based reporters that are included as part of this, who will say, now we go 

to so-and-so, reporting at the city council meeting, or whatever you 

have. In Rochester during that same period that Flint is reporting 

70 

on what’s going on in Flint, they’re reporting in Rochester about 

what’s going on in Rochester. 

After a certain period of time where they’ve presented the 

amount of local news that we have time for, they say something 

along the lines of, now for a national—— 

Senator HOLLINGS. Mr. Faber, I’m sorry I asked that question. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator HOLLINGS. I mean, you have me lost between three communities. All I know is that LOS and SBA compete in the same 

market, and now there’s all this News Central and stuff, and everything else like that, and one is given 40-some and the other is 

given only 7 and to go right to the point, on your Sinclair stations 

I have just a regular news release of a business journal here in 

March, where it says Sinclair’s KOAH station, Oklahoma City, instead of local news and Sinclair’s Baltimore-based News Central, 

the station aired Andy Griffith when they suffered a major meltdown last night while a tornado swept through the town. 

Otherwise, you have again in Oklahoma City, one Oklahoma station said tennis ball-size hail was raining down in the southwest 

part of the viewing area, and power poles were snapped, and I 

turned it over to the Sinclair station to find—nothing. No map, 

nothing. It went on that way until later on. 

Again, I can go to Raleigh, North Carolina, I can go to Pittsburgh, the news director Poister is leaving Sinclair’s station there, 

Sinclair recently dropped weekend weather at the station, and 

many believe that Poister’s jumping ship before the company guts 

the entire news department. Alan Frank has told his staff that 

Poister’s leaving has nothing to do with the news, but in Oklahoma 

City they canned at KOAH the entire sports department, the entire 

weather department, one photographer, one reporter, six other fulltime, part-time workers—I can go right on down to Rochester and 

all of these other things—I’m just quoting, Sinclair is becoming the 

expert on news light. That’s the problem. That’s the problem. 

Mr. FABER. Well, Sinclair’s increased—by the end of this year we 

will have increased by over 200 people the number of people working for us in the news operation. 

Senator HOLLINGS. Well, they must be turning into witnesses to 

come to Washington, because they’re not putting on the news—— 

Mr. FABER. No, that’s not true, because we’re adding news. 

Senator HOLLINGS.—I can tell you that. 

Mr. FABER. No, News Central is allowing us to add news in a 

large number of markets that otherwise would not have any news 

on those stations. 

Senator HOLLINGS. Well, put a release out on it, because I’m only 

reading the release. With respect to Mr. Bozell, that’s outstanding 

testimony. Here—and have that filth on television, and you say not 

one, not one has been fined for indecency, yet the Supreme Court 

has confirmed that responsibility in the Federal Communications 

Commission. 

And Mr. Kaplan, right to the point, I’ll never forget during that 

campaign my California friends say, they just don’t cover politics 

any more. They all hire a helicopter. They all hire a helicopter and 

they run out and they cover some kind of wreck, or whatever it is, 

or crime story, because they just don’t cover it any more, and what 

71 

you’ve done is, you’ve given me the actual studied fact that the 

large owners carry a lower percentage of news than the national 

average, while the small-size owners carry a higher percent of the 

local story, so as we get larger, what we are allowing is an elimination of news coverage and localism and everything else like that, 

and that’s coming from your expert study. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lott. 

Senator LOTT. I’ll pass. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Dorgan. 

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. 

Mr. Davis, first of all, I enjoyed your testimony, and it seems to 

me your station does a lot of good things, and let me ask you a 

question, because the chairman asked you a question about local 

standards, and your judgment about these programs. 

You heard Mr. Bozell talk about a program called Keen Eddie 

and describe part of the dialogue in Keen Eddie. Would you have 

aired that on your station, had you taken a look at that prior to 

its airing? 

Mr. DAVIS. Fortunately I wouldn’t have to make that type of decision. We would not air it because I don’t believe our network 

would produce a program that contained that material. I have good 

faith. I know the people that run our network, and I just don’t 

think that that would be something that they would produce. 

Senator DORGAN. So, because you feel that way, you would not 

have run Keen Eddie if it had been presented to you? 

Mr. DAVIS. No, I would have to make that decision once I saw 

the entire program in context. 

Senator DORGAN. But the reason I’m asking the question is, Senator McCain, you say you make a decision based on 13 years of 

your experience living in the area, and I think Senator McCain was 

trying to get at the notion of how do you make that judgment? 

Mr. DAVIS. I don’t want my answer to Senator McCain to give 

you the impression that I don’t feel that I have the independence 

or the ability to make those decisions. We happen to run the network. I think Disney has established itself. We certainly exceed the 

amount of quality and quantity of children’s programming. 

The Disney Corporation in Florida as far as its regard to family 

dealing has been well-established, and fortunately I don’t work for 

a company that has to make those type of decisions, but if I were, 

if that were presented to me, I would certainly have the ability to 

not air something that I did not think—— 

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Davis, the reason I asked the question is, 

this hearing is about localism, and standards, and so the question 

has been asked about standards, and a specific example was given. 

You came here as a broadcaster and I was hoping you might use 

that specific example and tell me whether it’s something you 

thought you would air in your market or not. 

Mr. DAVIS. Just based on what I heard, it doesn’t sound like 

something that I would look forward to presenting to the viewers 

in the Greater Philadelphia region, no. 

Here’s the—I remember, we heard earlier about the NAB code of 

conduct. My understanding, and my history may not be entirely 

correct, but I think a producer named Norman Lear was instruVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
72 

mental in a lawsuit that specifically did away with that code, and 

do you remember All in the Family? And some of those shows at 

the time were considered very controversial, had language, and I’m 

not defending this show or this dialogue. 

Senator DORGAN. I understand. 

Mr. DAVIS. It’s not produced by our company. 

Senator DORGAN. I understand, but you’re here as a broadcaster. 

I was just trying to get a sense of that. 

Also—and as I said when I started, it sounds to me from your 

recitation of what you do, your company does a lot of public-spirited things. Would you do me a favor with respect to your company 

as well. We have this publication, ‘‘Profiteering on Democracy.’’ 

Would you take a look through this and then give the Committee 

an analysis of what your company does with respect to rates for 

campaign ads? 

Mr. DAVIS. Sure. 

Senator DORGAN. I think one of my colleagues suggested that 

what is happening to politicians and to campaigns for elective office 

in this country is, they are being fundraisers now for broadcast 

companies who deliberately and in a very concerted way raise their 

rates in order to profiteer with respect to election campaigns. Just 

take a look at this. I’m not suggesting that your company’s involved. 

But Mr. Faber, this is most interesting to me, your discussion of 

Central Casting. You said, you can’t justify a weather person for 

1 hour a day. Well, I come from North Dakota. Bismarck, North 

Dakota is a town of about 40,000 to 50,000, now it’s over 50,000, 

but Bismarck has always had a weather person. From the day it 

started, KFOR television had a weather person, a colorful, interesting person whose job it was to present the weather. In North 

Dakota weather sometimes in the middle of the winter with a fastmoving, devastating snowstorm can be life or death. 

So most television stations around the country have always had 

a weather person. When did it become something that is a part of 

the discussion that it’s too expensive to have a weather person? 

When did that become a part of the discussion about owning a television station? 

Mr. FABER. I don’t know the station that you’re referring to in 

Bismarck, but I’m going to assume that it’s an NBC, ABC, or CBS 

affiliate. I’m also going to assume that it has several hours of news 

a day, and what Sinclair typically owns, again, are these Fox, WB, 

and UPN. 

We typically borrowed the third or fourth or fifth rated newscaster in the market. It is a difficult proposition when you’re only 

polling 1 hour a day—I mean, I will tell you, when I got to Sinclair—I’ve been at Sinclair for 7 years, and when I started at Sinclair our corporate offices were located in the same building where 

one of our stations broadcast in Baltimore, Maryland, the Fox affiliate there, and at the time that station had 1 hour of news at 10 

during the day. 

I’d never been in the industry, and I would spend a little bit of 

time wandering around the building and the people who were running the television station, trying to learn the industry, and I have 

to tell you, I couldn’t imagine—I mean, from being in Washington 

73 

and being down there, I remember asking somebody, what does a 

weather person do all day, and the answer was, not much. I mean, 

there’s just not enough time. When you’re only doing an hour of 

newscasting a day, it doesn’t justify it. 

And I remember, when you have a major news weather story, if 

we’re having blizzards in one of our markets or any serious weather, we cover that as a news story, locally in the market. I mean, 

Senator Hollings—— 

Senator DORGAN. You could do your weather from Singapore, 

couldn’t you? 

Mr. FABER. We could do weather from anywhere you want, just 

like the Weather Channel does, for example. 

Senator DORGAN. So then what about Senator Hollings’ description—well, I think he was describing one of your stations from a 

viewer saying, on one station we see the devastation of this storm, 

we see the physical impact of this storm, the effect on people of this 

storm, it’s being broadcast live by people who are explaining the 

consequences of it, and you have a meteorologist describing where 

the storm is moving, what it might mean to people, and on your 

station, what do you have on there? I hope it’s not Keen Eddie, but 

you’re running I love Lucy rerun as if there is a storm. 

Mr. FABER. Well, you’re relying on, I guess, one e-mail from 

somebody. In Oklahoma City we covered the tornados that happened in Oklahoma recently extensively with local newscasts, so 

it’s just not true what you’ve been told, it’s simply not true. We covered it extensively in Oklahoma City. 

Senator DORGAN. Well, are you going to believe me, or your own 

eyes? I mean, is that what you’re telling me? We’ve got the evidence here, and you said yourself that somehow—you said, the fact 

is, news in some cases too extensive. It seems to me that part of 

the ability that the American people give you to use the airways 

encumbers you with the responsibility to provide certain things to 

the people. One of them, in my judgment, is localism, and that 

means news coverage. 

Mr. FABER. But you don’t require every television station in this 

country to have news. We’re moving in the direction of putting 

news on, unlike other companies, who own WB and UPN and Fox 

affiliates who don’t put them on. We’re increasing the news. 

I mean, the alternative isn’t having a full-blown news staff with 

an anchor there and a weather person there. The alternative is 

having no news there. 

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Faber, the point of this hearing is about 

the FCC rules and about localism and how you’re antithetical to 

each other, and the fact is, you know and I know that we’re moving 

in the opposite direction. We don’t have massive amounts of stations out there adding people to the newsrooms. We have virtual 

news rooms these days with nobody present. That’s why we’re concerned about it. 

Mr. FABER. Not on television that I know of. 

Senator DORGAN. I understand your testimony. Your testimony 

is, this is a business, the question is, are we making money, and 

that’s all that matters. 

Mr. FABER. That’s not my testimony. 

74 

Senator DORGAN. Well, that’s what I heard, and what matters to 

some of us is, there are public interest requirements, and requirements of localism and diversity from a public policy standpoint that 

we must be concerned about, and there are some out there owning 

these stations that don’t give a rip about it, don’t give a rip, and 

we are moving so far away from it, and in fact the majority of the 

FCC doesn’t care about it, and that’s why the folks, Mr. Bozell, 

that have complained with respect to your issue haven’t received 

a postcard back, because we’ve got people that don’t understand 

they’re supposed to be referees here, and there are basic requirements of localism. 

I appreciate your testifying, Mr. Faber, but in my judgment, Central Casting is part of the problem that we confront here in losing 

localism in broadcasting, and you say—let me just make one final 

point. You say, if you have a news story, and you can Central Cast 

it to 39 stations, it’s more efficient. What about, in one of those 39 

stations, having somebody interpret that national news story in 

terms of what does it mean to Charlotte, what does it mean to Bismarck, what re its consequences for Tulsa? What about that interpretation of local news? 

Mr. FABER. I think that the important thing, the point I’m trying 

to make is, in the absence of Central Casting, with the type of 

news stations that we have, the type of television stations that we 

have, there has to be—we believe news is important. We believe in 

the public interest, and we believe providing news is an important 

thing that we do to serve the public interest of our communities. 

We truly believe that. 

Unfortunately, at some point the business of running television 

stations has to enter into the picture, and from an economic standpoint the choice becomes in many instances, have news with the 

Central Casting model that we’re using, or don’t have news at all. 

If you look in markets of similar size, where we’re starting the 

news on a Fox or a WB or a UPN, and you stop, and you look at 

other owners who own a WB or Fox or UPN in a similar size market, you’ll find they simply don’t have news. 

Senator DORGAN. Mr. Chairman, I regret my time is up. I had 

wanted to ask Mr. Kaplan something, but I think your testimony— 

I read it last evening, Mr. Kaplan. I think you do a real service in 

the studies that you prepared and presented to us, and I mean, I 

think we have to track these further. We need more national analysis of the kinds of studies that you have begun to present this 

morning, and look, I think these are really, really important issues. 

It just is not satisfactory to me, especially coming from a State 

that has some weather issues out there from time to time—rarely, 

I should say, for the tourism standpoint. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator DORGAN. But we do have some weather issues, and it is 

not satisfactory to say there’s only one set of weather data and that 

comes from some national source. If that’s the belief, you can just 

go to the Internet and broadcast from Singapore and tell us what 

the weather is going to be in Mission Ridge, South Dakota, or New 

Town, North Dakota, but it is not satisfactory to me, so that’s what 

localism is about. 

75 

So I’m so pleased, Mr. Chairman, that you’ve decided to hold this 

hearing. It’s the first one I’ve seen of this type since I’ve been on 

this Committee, and we need to keep pushing on these issues, because otherwise this inevitably moves in the wrong direction, and 

localism gets lost because it’s tirelessly old-fashioned, and this is 

all about profit and business practices, and the American people 

lose because they owned the airwaves in the first place, and there 

ought to be some payback with respect to the use of those airwaves. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lautenberg. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Yes, thanks, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to 

ask Mr. Davis, who I do know, and over a long period of time, and 

I never saw a bias in your campaign reporting that favored me, 

but—— 

[Laughter.] 

Senator LAUTENBERG. But we did well, and I thank you for your 

hard work, and I was kind of musing with my colleague over here 

as you were talking about all the parades and all the other things 

you do. The question is, do you have any time left for revenue-producing programming? 

But your presence, of course, in my state is critical in terms of 

the population there, because we don’t have the television coverage 

in that part of our State. 

How do you decide how you cover New Jersey? Is there a percentage of the effort that is devoted there? You have an office in 

Trenton, I think. 

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, we know approximately 28 percent of our television homes are in the southern half of New Jersey. As you know, 

our coverage area goes from roughly Trenton over to the coast, and 

we try to make sure we have the distance of, like I say, the two 

news bureaus with dedicated reporters and photographers in Trenton and in Margate, on the Jersey Shore. 

We also have Philadelphia-based Kathy Gandolfo, who covers 

parts of New Jersey to Philadelphia, and in addition to the halfhour public affairs show we focus on New Jersey, so we’re certainly 

sensitive to New Jersey, who through no fault of its own doesn’t 

have its own Philadelphia television stations, and of course our station in New York, Channel 7 is responsible for covering the northern half of New Jersey, and has the same commitment to the State 

through their facilities. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. I noted one thing here with your sister 

station, and that is that campaign time, that in PBI your rate over 

a period of time from August, September to just before the election 

takes place October 28, November 4, the rate per 30-second candidate had reduced by 8.8 percent. Your New York affiliate, or vice 

versa, the New York headquarters main station, went up by 67 

percent in the same period of time. Was business bad down in your 

area, or what happened up in the New York area that did this to 

those who wanted to have the news and those who wanted to give 

some of the news about the campaign? 

Mr. DAVIS. Well, I would say, without knowing specifically the 

time periods and those stations, I’ve always said, if you all can 

schedule elections in August and January, you would probably 

have a certainly lower demand for advertising. The fall and the 

76 

spring when primary and general elections are held are the same 

times you have back to school and retail operations, local merchants advertising the most, the heaviest. 

You know, on political advertising, I can honestly say we’ve 

never gone out and solicited or made presentations to media buyers 

to buy political advertising. We obviously give discounted rates. It’s 

not necessarily the best way to operate from a business standpoint. 

I don’t know the particulars about WABC. I do know they have the 

policies that they work very closely to make sure we’re within 

every FCC guideline on campaign and political advertising, so I 

suspect that it is a reflection of that particular marketplace and 

the demand of the marketplace in that timeframe. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Well, what happens when we have, let’s 

say, a gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey? It doesn’t necessarily run in the same cycle—it doesn’t run in the same cycle as 

Pennsylvania. Do you then stretch that percentage of coverage of 

New Jersey because the event is that much more—— 

Mr. DAVIS. Oh, sure. Oh, absolutely. When there’s a high profile 

race, or a high profile, a major story in New Jersey. We don’t look 

every day and say, only 28 percent of our story can be from New 

Jersey. That goes up or down throughout the year. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. What kind of latitude do you have as you 

try to meet the audience views of what’s taking place? Have you 

made your statement about your personal involvement in community and so forth. Are you in New Jersey when that’s being done, 

too? 

Mr. DAVIS. Oh, absolutely. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Are the appetites are exactly the same? 

Mr. DAVIS. Absolutely, and we have a good number of our employees that live and work in New Jersey, who are members of the 

New Jersey Association of Broadcasters. We worked in the New 

Jersey League of Women Voters on the debates and on the campaign coverage so absolutely, very sensitive, and also to Delaware, 

I should say. We’re responsible for the northern two counties of 

Delaware. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. I want to thank you for your presentation. 

I thought it was very good. 

I want to ask Mr. Bozell a question here, and that relates to— 

and I couldn’t agree with you more in your statements about 

what’s appropriate and so forth, and the example that Senator Dorgan used is disgusting. I mean, it’s just awful to put that kind of 

material out there for, I don’t know how it generates any interest, 

but it’s just vulgar, I think. 

But here’s where I find a little inconsistency. Shows, for instance, 

on the Fox Network are widely regarded as leading the way in defining deviancy and indecency. Now, ironically, Fox News and the 

network’s founder, Rupert Murdoch, are unabashedly conservative. 

Is there a contradiction here, or have you taken your fellow conservatives at Fox to task for claiming family values while working 

for a network responsible for so much of the trash that’s currently 

on TV? 

Mr. BOZELL. Well, sometimes I think it’s a network badly in need 

of lithium, but you have to understand, Senator, it is two very different operations. What goes on on the East Coast is completely 

77 

different than what goes on on the West Coast. It is two completely 

separate management entities. At the very top you have an owner 

who does control both who ought to be held accountable, and as a 

conservative myself who has been very supportive of many things 

he may have done in a political sense, I’m appalled at what he’s 

done with the popular culture, and I think that fairness demands 

that one say that. 

It’s not just Keen Eddie. I mean, there are plenty of other shows 

on that network where there are programs that, Senator, are 

aimed at children. They’re not aimed at adults. They are not aimed 

at you, they’re aimed at your children. Do you know what preceded 

this show that led the viewing audience into Keen Eddie? American 

Juniors, I believe it is, which is another one of these American Idol 

things, but now aimed at teenagers. It was designed to bring that 

audience into the 9 hour for Keen Eddie. 

There is something almost sick about this, and I think that it’s 

extraordinary that the Federal Communication Commission that is 

empowered by law to do something about this has never, ever said 

anything about any program ever, and every survey in the world 

shows you, 97 percent or more of the public is fed up with this, and 

yet the FCC won’t do anything. 

Senator LAUTENBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all 

of you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Senator Cantwell. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON 

Senator CANTWELL. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and I’d just like to 

add my appreciation for you holding this important hearing on this 

issue. It’s something that the State of Washington cares a great 

deal about. 

I guess Mr. Faber and Mr. Davis had a recent experience in our 

media market where there was a story about the signing of the 

President’s tax package, and at the signing of that tax package the 

broadcast said, the President’s signing the tax cut passed by Congress today, and it showed a picture of several of my colleagues, 

some from Washington State, some not from Washington State, 

who did not support that tax package. Do you think that that’s accurate broadcasting, or in the public’s interest? 

Mr. FABER. I’d have to see it, I think, before I could comment on 

that. 

Senator CANTWELL. Because showing a picture of a Member of 

Congress at the same time the content says the President’s signing 

the tax package isn’t clear? 

Mr. FABER. I just feel like I’d have to see it. I don’t quite—I 

mean, I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t—— 

Senator CANTWELL. Do you think it would be inaccurate if you 

made a statement that the President was signing the tax package 

and it showed a picture at the signing of the White House of another bill and it was, in fact, giving the viewers the impression—— 

Mr. FABER. I’m sorry, so it was showing another bill. There were 

people there standing next to the President—— 

Senator CANTWELL. Yes, they would show the President signing 

a bill, and it showed Members of Congress standing next to him. 

78 

Mr. FABER. It doesn’t sound—I mean, again, I wouldn’t want to 

criticize them without actually seeing it, but it doesn’t sound like 

good journalism, no. 

Senator CANTWELL. Do you think that’s in the public’s interest, 

when you have inaccuracies? 

Mr. FABER. Absolutely I don’t think it’s in the public interest to 

have inaccuracies in your news, no, I don’t. 

Senator CANTWELL. A recent study by Children Now found that 

the hours of programming for children’s content in Los Angeles decreased by half between 1998 and 2003, and at the same time in 

that media market, the number of station owners in the media 

market went from seven to five. Do you think that the decrease in 

that amount of content is in the public’s interest? 

Mr. FABER. I don’t know what is the right amount of children’s 

programming on broadcast television. 

If I can—you didn’t quite ask this question, but you mentioned 

the decrease in the number of owners. 

Senator CANTWELL. No, increase in the number of owners, decrease in the amount of children’s programming during that same 

period. 

Mr. FABER. I thought it was a consolidation you were talking 

about. 

Senator CANTWELL. Oh, yes, sorry. Sorry. 

Mr. FABER. And I just, I will comment that I don’t believe that 

the consolidation of the industry has anything to do with the reduction of children’s programming on broadcast television. I believe 

the growth and tremendous popularity of children’s programming 

on cable networks has led to the decrease of children’s programming on broadcast television. 

Senator CANTWELL. But availability in that market actually decreased. 

Mr. FABER. Locally, I mean, yes, it sounds like it did. They reduced the number of hours. I’m just saying it had nothing to do, 

in my view, with the fact that it was consolidation of the industry. 

It had to do with the fact that it has become tremendously difficult 

to find advertisers for children’s programming on broadcast television stations because they’re putting all their money on cable. 

Senator CANTWELL. Well, shouldn’t something like that be part 

of how you would measure public interest in programming of content, a variety of content? 

Mr. FABER. I think it is. I think it is, and I think that again I’m 

just saying that I don’t know how many hours they started with 

and how many hours they ended up with, so I don’t know that necessarily reducing the number of hours that they had—they may 

have had too much. I mean, I don’t disagree that it’s in the public 

interest to have a certain amount of educational children’s television programming on television stations. I don’t know the exact 

right number. The FCC has rules about what you should have on. 

Whether that’s the right number or not, I mean, we comply with 

those rules and sometimes exceed them. 

Senator CANTWELL. Would you be willing to put your content 

that you think meets the public interest standard, would you be 

willing to put that in some sort of documentation, or online, that 

shows this is how you’re meeting the public interest? 

79 

Mr. FABER. Well, with regard to children’s programming, there’s 

actually a form that every television station completes quarterly 

detailing how they’ve met what is called core programming, which 

is programming aimed at children between the ages, I believe of 2 

and 12—2 and 16, and that’s educational and informative in nature. This is called a form 398. Every television station in the country does it quarterly, and those are filed with the FCC and are 

available publicly on the FCC’s database currently. 

Senator CANTWELL. Are you willing to put other content, Mr. 

Faber and Mr. Davis, online as to what you think your stations are 

meeting the public interest standard with? 

Mr. FABER. I’d certainly look into it. I mean, we also did what’s 

called a quarterly programming report that is similar to the children’s—I believe Commissioner Copps mentioned it earlier, that all 

stations do, and put in their public file quarterly detailing the programming that they believe met the public interest during that 

quarter and what their plans are for the upcoming quarter, and I 

just need to look into whether—I mean, it would be a lot easier if 

the FCC frankly made that so that you could just do it like the 

children’s—we don’t have any problem with making that available. 

I mean, it’s on the public file, which is available to any member 

of the public. It’s just a question, again, we are running a business, 

and before I’d say yes, we’ll go do that, I’d be interested to find out 

from our intellectual technology people what the cost and difficulty 

of doing that would be. 

As I said, if the FCC could just set it up so that you’d do it just 

like you do the children’s I think it would be much easier, and 

every television station in the country could do it. 

Senator CANTWELL. I know my time has expired, Mr. Chairman, 

but Mr. Davis, would you like to comment on that? 

Mr. DAVIS. Well just, this is our most recent quarterly programming report. Obviously it’s in the public file and we could submit 

it to the Committee or anybody else that wants to look at it. We’re 

proud of it. We have no reason not to let anybody see it. 

Senator CANTWELL. That’s all your programming you think 

meets the public interest—— 

Mr. DAVIS. It’s the quarterly listing of community related programming. It’s an FCC-directed form where we document all of the 

programming and things that we do within the news and public affairs programming that we have that in our opinion serves the public interest. 

Senator CANTWELL. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Cantwell. 

According to this study, conducted by the Alliance for Better 

Campaigns, they studied 37,000 political ads on 39 local television 

stations in 19 states, and found that the average price of a candidate ad rose 53 percent from the end of August to the end of October of last year, and of course we all know that we passed the 

lowest unit charge statute in 1971, where broadcasters are prohibited from charging candidates more for ad time than they charge 

their high volume year-round advertisers. Obviously, that’s not 

working, because no candidate now can have their spot guaranteed, 

so therefore they will not take advantage of the lowest unit rate 

rule. 

80 

Mr. Corn-Revere, do you think we ought to tighten the law, and 

Dean Kaplan, in order to make sure that candidates can get the 

lowest unit rate? 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. I really don’t have an opinion on whether 

Congress should make changes in that law. 

The CHAIRMAN. You have no opinion? 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. No. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Dean Kaplan. 

Mr. KAPLAN. Certainly the law should be enforced. Whether it requires tightening beyond stringent enforcement, I don’t know. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it’s very unfortunate that the law seems to 

be avoided because no one who’s running for office wants to have 

their commercial run at a time when nobody is watching. 

Mr. Corn-Revere, Dean Kaplan states, ‘‘the public interest obligation has today essentially been entrusted to an unregulated and 

unmonitored market.’’ Do you believe this unregulated market is 

performing in a fashion that serves the public interest? 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. Well, again, that goes back to the question of 

defining the public interest in the first place, and as a regulatory 

matter it’s something that the FCC and the courts have tried to do 

case by case. 

When you look at the various mechanisms that have been employed over time, ranging from direct content regulations that have 

more of a First Amendment difficulty with them to the option that 

you describe at the outset of the hearing, of providing more spectrum for low power FM stations, for example, all of those are ways 

of providing greater public interest programming. Some of them 

present more constitutional difficulties than others. 

The focus of my testimony was to suggest that the closer you get 

to content regulation, the closer you increase the tensions, the constitutional tensions between the law and the Constitution. 

The CHAIRMAN. You heard Mr. Bozell’s example of sexual innuendo being aired at 9 p.m. on Fox. Do you believe that there’s anything Congress can or should do to prevent this? 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. Well, rather than just look at that one example, this opens up a whole additional area that we could spend a 

great deal of time with. 

To begin with, Mr. Bozell is incorrect when he says that there 

have been no indecency fines for television broadcasts. I know of 

at least two, one in 1988 and one in the mid-nineties, and part of 

that goes to the difference between television programming and 

radio programming. 

It is true that most of the indecency cases have involved radio 

programming. There have been a number of other cases where the 

FCC has investigated, and it goes to the difficulty of applying the 

kind of standard that the FCC has employed. I’ll give you a good 

example. In 1990, the FCC investigated a San Francisco public television station for broadcasting the miniseries, the Singing Detective. This was produced by BBC. It was a winner of the Peabody 

Award. 

The reason it came to our attention, and I was at the FCC at the 

time, was because in the course of 7 hours there were maybe three 

scenes that had questionable material, questionable depending on 

your perspective. 

81 

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, that was 13 years ago, Mr. Corn-Revere, and things have changed rather dramatically. 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. But because of the FCC’s investigation, which 

required the station to spend about a year responding to it, that 

miniseries has not appeared on television in America since. It is 

the application of that standard, no matter how bad a particular 

example you may want to talk about here today maybe, but it is 

the application of that standard that creates significant constitutional tensions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you believe Congress could legislate a family 

viewing hour that could stand a constitutional challenge? 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. No, I do not. 

The CHAIRMAN. On the issue of cross-ownership very briefly, the 

reason why I’m very concerned about it is I have a letter from a 

gentleman who is running for office, and in his case—a quote from 

his letter—a Baltimore TV station involved in a campaign of misleading and false allegations about my Navy service a few days before the 2002 elections. Instead of exercising journalistic integrity, 

the station, using blatantly intimidating tactics, made the charges 

even after authoritative Navy documents were given to the station 

showing the allegations were false. 

But then he goes on to say, of great interest, the station tried unsuccessfully to persuade local newspapers to print the same false 

charges. I wonder, if the television station had owned the newspaper, whether those false charges would have been printed in the 

newspaper, and that is an issue of, I think, significant concern. 

Mr. FABER. Can I respond just very briefly to that? 

The CHAIRMAN. Sure. 

Mr. FABER. Just so you know, we stand by the allegations. The 

person that you’re talking about—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Stand by the allegations? 

Mr. FABER. Yes, absolutely. 

The CHAIRMAN. Even though the United States Navy responded? 

Mr. FABER. The United States Navy responded by—the candidate 

that you’re talking about stated on his website that he had won the 

Silver Star. It was not true. What he had won was—and I’m not 

a military person, and I know you have a history and a background 

in that, but my understanding is there are certain medals that you 

can win, and then you can get a silver star added to those ribbons. 

It’s different from what people generally think of as a Silver Star. 

The Navy technically said that—and he changed his website because of the reports. He also said that he had served in Desert 

Storm, which he had never served in. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I didn’t particularly want to get into it, but 

the Navy’s official response, quote, allegations that the captain 

wore unearned military decorations proved to be unsubstantiated. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

82 

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

Cockeysville, MD, August 13, 2003 

Hon. JOHN MCCAIN, 

Chairman, Committee on Commerce, 

U.S. Senate, 

Washington, DC. 

Dear Senator McCain, 

I am writing in regards to recent statements you made during a hearing before 

the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on July 23, 2003. During 

the hearing you repeated unsubstantiated allegations from a letter addressed to you. 

This letter included allegations made against me. I am not aware of any attempt 

by your office and/or the Committee staff to verify these unsubstantiated allegations. Accordingly, I believe it only fair that I have an opportunity to respond and 

that you have an obligation to include this letter in the official hearing record. 

You referenced a letter addressed to you from Mr. C. Richard D’Amato. Mr. 

D’Amato is not the first, nor will he likely be the last politician that is unhappy 

with an investigative news story that reported on the veracity of campaign claims 

he made. 

In his letter, Mr. D’Amato referred to WBFF–TV as having ‘‘. . . used false information . . .’’ in a news story regarding his claims of military service. The facts are 

simple. Mr. D’Amato claimed in campaign material to having won three Bronze Star 

and the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals for service while serving on board the 

USS King (DLG–10) off the coast of Vietnam between 1971 and 1973. He also 

claimed in his official Maryland House of Delegates website to having ‘‘served in 

. . . Operation Desert Storm’’ and to having received the Southwest Asia Service 

Medal for this service. 

A Freedom of Information Act request was filed for his service record. A thorough 

review of his service record was made, inquiries were made of the Navy Awards Office, his service record was reviewed by Mr. B.G. Burkett, a recognized expert in 

reviewing suspect military service claims, telephone discussions were held with Mr. 

D’Amato and his attorney, and Mr. D’Amato provided additional military records for 

our review. The following was learned. 

(1) Mr. D’Amato never received one Bronze Star Medal, let alone three. 

(2) According to the Navy and Marine Corps Awards Manual (SECNAVINST 

1650.1G), Navy units were not eligible for the Armed Forces Expeditionary 

Medal for Vietnam service between July 3, 1965 and April 29, 1975. The Navy 

Awards Office confirmed this exclusion. 

(3) Mr. D’Amato did not serve in Operation Desert Storm. He did perform part 

of his annual two weeks of active duty for training in August 1990, the period 

of Operation Desert Shield, onboard the USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN–69), 

but he did not have the minimum 30 days necessary to have earned the 

Southwest Asia Service Medal as a Naval reservist. The USS Dwight D Eisenhower did not participate in actual combat operations so the time minimum 

could not have been waived. 

(4) Mr. B.G. Burkett who authored the book Stolen Valor conducted the independent review of Mr. D’Amato’s service record. Mr. Burkett questioned the 

authenticity of some of the documents provided by Mr. D’Amato. In addition, 

Mr. D’Amato refused our request to provide the DD–214 covering his six years 

of active duty service, the period of time in which he claimed to have originally won the three Bronze Star and Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals. 

While the news investigation was underway, Mr. D’Amato deleted these various claims from his campaign material, changed his campaign and official 

House of Delegates websites and issued a statement referring to these unsupported claims as ‘‘minor ambiguities.’’ 

Finally, while we appreciate Mr. D’Amato’s assertion that no investigation was 

launched by the Navy regarding his wearing of unauthorized medals, no such claim 

was ever made. However, during the course of our inquiries, the Commander, Naval 

Reserve Forces Judge Advocate General (CNR JAG) requested certain documentation from us, which we provided. The CNR JAG informed us that he had forwarded 

the documentation to the Navy Inspector General’s office with a recommendation it 

be forwarded to the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office to begin an 

investigation. CNR JAG officials were concerned over the unusual circumstances regarding Mr. D’Amato’s return to active duty for two brief periods of time after he 

had retired. The Navy IG office recently informed us that it will discontinue purVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:12 Mar 18, 2014 Jkt 075679 PO 00000 Frm 00086 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\GPO\DOCS\87067.TXT JACKIE
83 

suing the investigation as it does not investigate retired officers below the rank of 

rear admiral except under extraordinary circumstances. 

In conclusion, we continue to stand by the investigative news story. Extensive research and independent, third party review of his military records found that several of Mr. D’Amato’s claims of military service and military decorations were unsupported by Navy records or by his military service records. We have enclosed just 

a sampling of some of this extensive documentation. 

The fact that Mr. D’Amato deleted these claims from official state government and 

campaign material and ceased making these claims while campaigning speaks volumes. 

Sincerely, 

MARK E. HYMAN. 

ATTACHMENTS


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Mr. FABER. That’s not the allegation we made on the air. We did 

not make an allegation that he wore decorations he had not 

earned. We made an allegation that he stated he had won decorations that he had not. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I’d be glad to pursue it later on, but it 

seems to me that the Navy’s official response is important here, but 

I won’t go into it. 

Mr. Bozell, what do you want Congress to do? 

Mr. BOZELL. Senator, I think there are certain steps that can be 

taken. First, I think Congress needs to signal to the FCC that it 

needs to start doing its job, and since my data was questioned, I 

have to say that the data that I used, when I say that no station 

in the U.S. has ever been fined, that comes from the FCC. Go to 

the FCC. That’s what they claim. If they’re wrong, then that’s 

something we ought to ask them. The only station that’s ever been 

fined was one in Puerto Rico, which I found rather interesting. 

First of all, the Congress should go to the FCC and tell the FCC 

that it wants it to get serious about it. It should raise the fines that 

you, Senator, are pushing, from that silly $27,000 figure, which is 


723DAMAT4.eps
91 

utterly inconsequential, to $250,000, as you’ve suggested, and then 

make those fines applicable to every affiliated station that carries 

something that is finable, that is found to have been worthy of a 

fine. If that were to happen, those affiliate stations immediately 

would stop airing this garbage on television. They would stop abusing the privilege. They would do it immediately if they knew the 

FCC was going to be serious. 

But in fact, every time the FCC comes forward and says anything, within minutes, guaranteed that talk radio is just having a 

field day. The Howard Sterns are laughing on the air. They’re 

laughing at the FCC, and, Senator, they’re laughing at you. They’re 

laughing at this whole idea that they might be constrained from 

what they’re doing, and they continue doing it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Final comments. Dean Kaplan. 

Mr. KAPLAN. I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. Right 

now, stations are required to file quarterly reports on paper and 

keep them in their offices that talk about their public interest programming. They’re not required to keep program logs with time 

codes. As a consequence, it’s next to impossible for anyone to do the 

kind of research to create the kind of public pressure to encourage 

or shame stations to live up to their obligations. I believe that asking stations to disclose what their public affairs programming is, 

not in general terms but in specific terms with time codes, and to 

put that on the Internet, is a small step that will serve the public. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Corn-Revere, final comments? 

Mr. CORN-REVERE. When I was invited to testify at this hearing, 

and heard that it was sort of a review of the good old days of regulation, and whether or not those days should be brought back, 

there tends to be sort of a gauzy memory of how well that regulation worked. 

For those of us that have been at the FCC and seen it first-hand, 

I think it bears a closer examination of whether or not the various 

mechanisms that you would use to bring broadcasters to account 

to see how well they worked in the past just to see where there was 

greater participation in the renewal process and the ability of interest groups to challenge renewals, that led to a process of green 

mail, where people were essentially in the business of challenging 

license renewals until they got their payoff. That was something 

that the FCC was called upon to address and finally was able to 

put a stop to that. 

If you take any one of these proposals, whether it’s greater oversight of programming or other measures that you would sort of reimpose to enforce a vision of the public interest, you have to consider the unintended consequences of those actions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank you, Mr. Corn-Revere, and I’m 

sorry if you were given the impression that this was a desire to return to the old days. It was not. The purpose of this hearing is to 

ascertain whether the licensees who receive spectrum for free, 

which are owned by the taxpayers of America, were living up to 

their public interest obligations as we see them, so I’m sorry you 

were misinformed as to the intent of this hearing. 

Mr. Faber, a final comment? 

Mr. FABER. Yes. I would just like to veer off slightly from the 

News Central topic that I focused on in my comments and just 

92 

mention something in regards to something Commissioner Copps 

said, which is, he has mentioned on numerous occasions, including 

today, the 2 million public comments and 99 or something percent 

of them are opposed to further deregulation, and several Members 

of the Committee seem impressed by this and impressed by the 

idea of this rising up of this national interest against this. 

I will tell you, having gone through an awful lot of what’s on the 

FCC’s website that’s available, what I believe probably 99 percent 

of them are, are simply the exact same form letters that were created by three or four organizations. Hundreds of thousands of these 

simply came from members of the National Rifle Association, who 

sent out a mass e-mailing to their membership saying, we have to 

stop media consolidation, here’s an e-mail, please just click here 

and this will send it to the FCC. I don’t believe there was a national uprising. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, as an elected official I can tell you that everywhere I go, I’m astonished to hear about the concern that people 

have, and that’s been voiced on this issue, including the one that 

Mr. Bozell raises, so you and I have a very different view of public 

opinion and their concern on this issue, but I appreciate your view. 

Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was born in 1952, about 

15 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio. I remember seeing a little blackand-white television. We could get maybe one or two channels if 

the wind was blowing in the right direction. There was no UHF 

stations. There was no FM radio. There certainly was no DVD, 

VCR, satellite television, satellite video. All of those things I believe were created by private industry, who had the benefit of people like yourself creating the proper atmosphere for those things to 

grow, and technology to develop. I would just like you to consider 

some of those things going forward, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the witnesses. It has been a very interesting hearing. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the Committee adjourned.] 

(93) 

A P P E N D I X 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. INOUYE, U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII

I want to thank Chairman McCain for holding today’s hearing on media ownership. This hearing is especially timely in the wake of the FCC’s June 2 decision, 

which relaxed many of the remaining structural limitations imposed on broadcast 

companies. Given the alarming implications of this decision, it is extremely timely 

that we begin today to review the behavioral as well as the structural limitations 

that serve as a check on large media conglomerates. 

Over seventy years ago, broadcasters were made trustees of the public spectrum. 

In return for this privilege, came a responsibility to use the public’s airwaves in a 

manner that would principally serve the public, not the balance sheets of publicly 

traded companies. Toward that end, reasonable limits on media ownership coupled 

with requirements encouraging broadcasters to cover issues that are important to 

their local communities have historically helped to maintain a critical balance between the drive for commercial success and the preservation of a free marketplace 

of ideas. 

Over the last twenty years, there have been sweeping deregulatory changes in the 

broadcast market. In the 1980s, the FCC eliminated many of its public interest 

rules based on the rationale that competition in the market would forcebroadcasters 

to serve the public interest. With the significant relaxation of the rules since that 

time, I question whether the lack of both structural limitations and behavioral obligations on broadcast companies can continue to be justified. 

I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses today and hope that this hearing 

will result in recommendations that will be examined by the FCC and the Congress 

to ensure that America’s broadcast system continues to serve the people of this diverse nation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

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