The Code does not exist today. Members of our Advisory Committee asked the NAB if it would revive the Code, provided Congress exempted it from the antitrust law. No, things are just fine without the Code, was the answer. The marketplace is the solution. If the marketplace is the solution, broadcasters should want the digital channels to be auctioned.
Broadcasters prefer a different kind of auction.
This is an auction where candidates for public office buy back the public airwaves from broadcasters. We finished the most expensive off-year political campaign in American history with the lowest voter turnout in 50 years. Most of the hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on television advertising. Yet the NAB argues that television s unique capacity to use the public airwaves to inform and enlighten us should be left only to a marketplace auction. This puts us in the company of only two other countries in the world which do not require public service television time in political campaigns, Malaysia and Taiwan.