Taxpayers can only wish.
In the 19th Century, Uncle Sam gave a treasure of land to railroad robber barons. In the 21st Century version, the federal government will give away broadcast spectrum to television networks. One set of losers will be potential spectrum users including, telecommunication companies and independent television stations who had lined up to write checks to Uncle Sam at a proposed auction. Furthermore, networks can profit by using this second set of channels for anything they want, including telephone service. The best taxpayers can now hope for is to generate relatively small change for federal coffers from broadcast spectrum auctions sometime in the future.