Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Panel wants greater public say in television's future

Digital television will bring more broadcast channels and increase broadcasters' responsibility to serve civic interests, a panel said Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters convention.

In a discussion in the Las Vegas Convention Center's South Hall, the Public Airwaves, Public Interest Coalition called for the Federal Communications Commission to better define television broadcasters' public-interest obligation. Particularly necessary, the coalition said, is a commitment to civic and electoral programming.

The coalition highlighted a proposal it sent to the FCC on April 7. The plan asks the commission to require TV broadcasters to have at least three hours per week of civic or electoral affairs programming on their most-watched primary channel. It also calls for the FCC to require independently produced programming for at least 25 percent of the primary channel's prime time schedule.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said electoral discussion is acutely necessary now with the presidential election coming. To make informed votes, he said, the public needs to hear honest, open debate that can transcend political advertising's loud, partisan messages.

"From 1996 to 2000, coverage of even the presidential race on the evening news dropped by a third," Copps said. "What coverage there is tends to focus on polls and handicapping the horse race rather than on the serious issues that the nation needs to be discussing."

Fellow FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said the public now feels drummed out by a consolidating media controlled by a handful of corporations.

"Everywhere we went, we've heard radio and TV were increasingly commercialized and homogenized," Adelstein said. "People are upset by the lack of coverage of key issues. A lot of people felt fewer and fewer viewpoints were being expressed even as the number of channels proliferated."

Panelist Jonathan Rintels, executive director for Creative Voices in Media, said the digital spectrum will give broadcasters roughly six new channels for every one analog channel they now have. The potential for public voices to get heard, or ignored, is vast.

The coalition is pushing for change on television, Rintels added, because television both reflects and shapes culture.

"(Television) has the power to make our children obese and violent, to turn them into drug-addicted, indolent couch potatoes," Rintels said. "Or, put more positively ... it has the power to turn them into healthy, informed, responsible voting citizens of vibrant democracy."

Earlier Tuesday, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said the FCC is working toward expanding the nation's transition to all-digital television broadcasting, though he added its unlikely a congressionally ordered shift to digital TV will be completed by the end of 2006 because it's impossible to measure how many homes have digital-ready equipment, among other roadblocks.

Over-the-air broadcasters should also adapt their business strategies to use new technologies such as wireless communication, Powell said. Today's youth are much less likely to adhere to the "one-to-many" media approach exemplified in the past by broadcast networks, he said, adding they prefer the more-personalized media options made possible through cable and satellite television, the Internet and wireless devices.

"There's a cultural change going on, a technological change, that I think is moving to a highly personalized experience, for better or for worse," Powell said.

The coalition has 23 member organizations, including Common Cause, Moveon.org and Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting.

Gaming Wire reporter Chris Jones contributed to this report.