Campaign advertising revenue has become a huge boon to the bottom line of most broadcasters, even as it has been the locomotive driving the skyrocketing costs of campaigning. As a core of their charter, broadcasters have a mandate to operate in the public interest as guardians of that interest. Some broadcasters conscientiously have tried to balance their reliance on campaign commercials with admirable efforts to improve political discourse through their news coverage, candidate debates and public service campaigns. But a large number of stations do none of these things, and others apply them intermittently and erratically. The practical reality was that we were not going to get some large quid pro quo in return for the digital spectrum.
Broadcasters have too much political power for that.
Instead, we had to come up with a pragmatic recommendation that would be easy for broadcasters to do and yet would be a huge step forward to promoting candidate discourse in campaigns. We bent over backward to avoid any regulatory straitjacket and to respect the news judgment and local concerns of each broadcast station. So we said that the stations could determine the time slots. Stations would be encouraged to make the time available to all of the serious candidates, but would have full discretion to give the time to one candidate even if the other opted out. The only proviso here was that the discourse be candidate-centered opportunities for candidates to face viewers and get messages out there.