Guest columnist
Putting the 'public' back into public airwaves

By Alex Alben
Special to The Times

	Alex Alben
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Media concentration — the trend of more corporations owning more and more news outlets — is a silent killer of our democracy and marketplace of ideas.

When I worked as a researcher for Walter Cronkite at CBS News in 1980, CBS was only allowed to own seven television and seven radio stations. CBS invested to make the stations the best they could be, but they also had to vigorously compete with local independent news outlets in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other media markets. In those days, CBS was known as the "Tiffany of networks" and founder Bill Paley prided himself on having the finest news team.

Today, CBS has been merged into Viacom, which also owns MTV, the Infiniti radio group and a host of other media properties. Like the other networks, it no longer brings us live "gavel to gavel" coverage of political conventions. Instead, radio audiences are treated to "shock jocks" and football fans had to suffer through half-time "entertainment" that brought into question the network's commitment to its license obligations.

The key point to remember is that we, the public, own the airwaves — for radio, TV and new data services — not the corporations who are routinely granted licenses to rent them. Exploiting a public resource, broadcasters used to feel an obligation to create great public affairs programming, to police indecent programming and to abide by a Fairness Doctrine for public debate. Over the past 30 years, the FCC rules and self-imposed regulation that created this atmosphere for respecting the "public" dimension of the public airwaves has gradually withered away with each new call for deregulation.

Few people saw the danger signs, as each small rule was removed from the books. We lost the seven-station rule, abandoned the Fairness Doctrine and started to grant nearly automatic renewal of broadcast licenses, under the theory that requiring radio and television stations to list public-affairs programming was so much "paperwork."

Congress recently considered allowing one corporation to own stations reaching up to 45 percent of the national television audience. And this corporation could also own newspapers, cable systems, satellite networks and motion picture studios. With the proposed merger of Disney and Comcast, this debate will stay on the front burner.

The guardians of the public airwaves should pause to think about a universe where large cable companies (or satellite networks) own our most successful content companies. What rules would be in place to assure that every voice — whether expressed in music, drama or writing — will be given access in an industrial combination where the distributor wholly owns the shop that generates the content?

As an Internet executive, I was frequently called upon to validate the theory that the multitude of voices available on the Web makes traditional media ownership rules obsolete. But I couldn't agree with this conclusion. Yes, there are millions of Web sites featuring a wild variety of unique opinions. Yet, the Internet also has the effect of magnifying the traditional voices of the biggest media brands. The most popular Internet sites for use, for example, are all owned by the major TV and print media companies.

It's time for Congress to seriously review media ownership rules, and give the FCC clear guidance to connect license renewal to a commitment to high quality public affairs programming. This may not require rigid new rules, but rather should aim to stimulate broadcasters to put the "public" back into the public airwaves they utilize to conduct their highly profitable businesses.

We may no longer live in the VHF world of three major news outlets per city, but we can't afford to further relax the media ownership restrictions. It's time to revive the commitment of media companies to using the public airwaves to bring us rich and diverse news and public-affairs programming. True competition at all levels of the media landscape represents our best hope for raising the quality of debate on the pressing issues that face our society.

Alex Alben, of Mercer Island, served as an executive for two Internet companies and two motion-picture studios. A former writer for Walter Cronkite at CBS, Alben's expertise is in intellectual-property law. He currently is a Democratic candidate for Congress from the 8th District. This column originally appeared on his Web site, www.alben2004.com

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