The Public Television Legal Survival Guide, 2d ed.

• Author: Terry, Herbert A.
• Position: Book Review

The Public Television Legal Survival Guide, 2d ed., Association of Public Television Stations, 2001, 254 pages. The book can be ordered only through the Association of Public Television Stations.

With a great deal of work, a creative scriptwriter might turn this book into Survivor VII: Inside the Beltway. The more likely use--and, indeed, its intended use--is as a basic primer on what differentiates the law of public television from broadcasting law generally. According to its preface, the book is intended for "station personnel who do not have legal training" but who need to know some of the basics for their daily work and, through footnotes, for "in-house station counsel and outside legal consultants." (1)

For the most part, this book fulfills that promise. It needs to be stressed, however, that it presumes substantial prior knowledge of all the other federal law that applies to the operation of broadcast stations in the United States. This is not the book to hand to your newly hired management assistant lacking prior experience in commercial broadcasting. But it certainly would be the ideal guide to hand to somebody recently "downsized" from a commercial station as a result of employment trends who lands in public broadcasting. Selected chapters could also be usefully given to unit managers, with instructions that they use them to conduct a "legal audit" of parts of the station under their supervision. This would at least highlight possible problem areas that could be subjected to more thorough review by management and/or counsel.

Nor is this exactly the book to give to in-house counsel or outside consultants unless they, too, have basic familiarity with broadcasting law and regulation in general. Don't give it to libel lawyers and expect them to suddenly understand broadcast licensing issues. That said, the footnotes are extensive (they make up more than forty-three percent of the text), appropriate, and accurate. They could lead the modestly initiated lawyer to a lot of useful, if occasionally arcane, material. If your commercial-broadcast-experienced lawyer billed you fairly for becoming expert in some public television legal problem, buying this book for the lawyer could be cost-beneficial.

Privately published by the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) in Washington, D.C., and overseen by Andrew D. Cotlar, their Senior Staff Attorney, The Public Television Legal Survival Guide quite effectively organizes and summarizes most federal law--statutory and regulatory--that is unique to...