Mass Media Unleashed: How Washington Policymakers Shortchanged the American Public.

• Author: Geller, Henry
• Position: Book review

The book treats two policies: the public trustee policy and the deregulatory market policy, which was introduced in 1980 and has now reached full fruition. The former is based on the consideration that more people want to broadcast than there are available frequencies or channels, that the government chooses one licensee, and therefore, that one must act as a trustee for the public. (2) The governing act specifies the public interest areas--contributing to an informed citizenry, acting as a local outlet, and serving the educational needs of children. In these areas, the broadcaster must necessarily, at times, put public service first over maximizing profits.

Ramey has shown that even before the deregulation period, this public trustee scheme did not work. (3) The FCC for many years used an ascertainment approach when what was needed was quantitative guidelines as to minimum amounts of informational programs, including those of local origin and educational children's fare. Even during the period when the FCC had quantitative guidelines, they were never implemented. As Ramey states, no station ever lost a license based on inadequate informational or educational programs. (4) He points to the egregious renewal of the WLBT station in Jackson, Mississippi, which was shown to have broadcast only the segregationist views of a raging current issue and only one fifteen minute early morning show for African Americans, even though they represented forty-five percent of the local population. (5)

The lesson to be drawn from this history is that behavioral content regulation is simply unworkable in this sensitive First Amendment area. This was demonstrated again in the 1990s when the FCC adopted a weekly three-hour guideline for so-called "core educational programming" (programs that not only entertain but also are designed to educate either in a cognitive or a social purpose fashion). Implementation has again been inadequate, with studies showing that a substantial number of programs being relied upon by commercial broadcasters were not educational in any sense, and the number that might be so termed were all social purpose in nature (e.g., "Inside the NBA," to teach youngsters leadership). As Ramey points out, viewers soon learned to rely upon public television and certain cable channels for educational programs. (6)

Ramey soundly calls this public trustee approach a charade. (7) There have been high costs to this charade, and not just the loss of public service programming, as important as that is. Take the undermining of the allocation scheme of local outlets, for example. With many radio stations controlled by the large national owners with little or no local fare, and with many TV stations doing no local news or other local programming, there is a huge misallocation of valuable spectrum that could be better used for mobile or similar telecommunications. TV stations that do not render significant local service, but rather rely primarily on entertainment such as movies or syndicated shows, could be replaced by satellite or powerful regional stations instead of the present local assignments.

Ramey points out that the FCC embarked on a deregulatory market approach in the 1980s. In 1981, it adopted "postcard renewal" for radio and, in 1984, for TV. (8) In the same decade, it eliminated both its cap on commercials for commercial TV and the fairness doctrine. (9) In the 1996 Telecommunications Act...