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Show Airing Democracy: Politics and Broadcast Television Travis Currit been effective at least in part (Annenberg Public Policy Center 1997). Governmental attempts at ensuring political discourse on broadcast television have traditionally come through the FCC. Since its creation in 1934 with the Federal Communications Act, the FCC has recognized that, in order for broadcasters to fulfill their public interest obligations brought about by their free use of the public spectrum, television must be used to develop an "informed public opinion through the (public) dissemination of news and ideas concerning the vital issues of the day" (Federal Communications Commission 1949). Initially, this included concrete regulations by the FCC such as the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to cover public issues of importance to the community and to provide reasonable opportunity for contrasting views, and "ascertainment" policies, which required broadcasters to propose programming to address specific community needs and problems. Most of these regulations were abolished during the deregulation of the 1980s, however, as they were seen as unnecessary governmental burdens on journalistic free speech (New America Foundation 2004). Thus today the main surviving concrete regulations concerning political broadcasting deal not with the journalistic content of the news but more with the way in which broadcast stations sell time to candidates. These are equal opportunity requirements, which require broadcasters to allow all candidates in a particular race the same opportunities for use of its facilities (bona fide news events excluded); requirements for reasonable access to, or to permit purchase of, broadcast time; and lowest unit charge requirements, which require stations to sell candidates advertising time at the same low price they charge high-volume costumers (New America Foundation 2004). While all of these are valuable in assuring an equal and fair playing field for candidates, they do nothing to address the problem of a lack of free and at least purportedly objective news coverage. Addressing this would require substantial additions to the current public interest obligations as they have been interpreted by the FCC. The public interest obligations of broadcasters were revisited in 1998 by a special commission, headed by then Vice President Gore and thus called the Gore Commission, charged with looking at these obligations in light of the upcoming transition to digital television. Digital television, due to its compression capabilities, offers broadcasters roughly four times as much spectrum space as does the current analog system, and thus the transition amounted to the bequeathment of a gift valued at almost $70 billion of public spectrum to broadcasters (U.S. Department of Commerce 1998). The commission was put in place to determine what public obligations this incredible gift should place on broadcasters. The commission came up with a number of proposals, but one of the most interesting for our purposes was a voluntary challenge to all broadcasters to air 5 minutes of candi- date-centered discourse between the hours of 5:35 and 11:35 p.m. in the 30 days before the election. The commission felt that even this small commitment of time to electoral matters could hopefully convey to the public the importance of elections and simultaneously educate them about the issues involved. The commission urged the stations to start even before the beginning of the digital transition, with the elections of 2000 (U.S. Department of Commerce 1998). By and large, this challenge went unmet. None of the three major networks broadcast 5 minutes of candidate-centered discourse (CCD) per night during the 2000 election. In fact, they did not come anywhere near that mark, averaging only 64 seconds of CCD per night per network during the general election (Falk and Aday 2000). Local news did little better, even among stations that made a public commitment to meeting it. The 74 stations in a Lear Center study done on the 2000 general election averaged only 74 seconds of CCD per night, far short of the five minute mark set by the commission. The 24 stations that had made public commitments did better than average, airing 2 minutes 17 seconds of CCD per night, but still aired only half as much as they had committed to. The remaining stations that made no commitments aired only an abysmal 45 seconds of CCD per night (Kaplan and Hale 2001). Despite the failure of this challenge to have the desired effect, the fact that stations who made the commitment aired more than double the amount of CCD than did uncommitted stations showed that voluntary challenges could have some positive effects in increasing the sheer amount of political information broadcast, if not necessarily its quality or effectiveness. This led some reform groups to call for a renewed challenge for the 2004 election. The occasional successes of media-instigated voluntary efforts to improve broadcasting provide some hope for that route as a path for reform. However, a large coalition of reform-minded groups have given up on voluntary solutions and are promoting a mandatory, government regulated set of reforms. This coalition of 60 national groups, called the Our Democracy, Our Airwaves coalition, introduced in 2003 similarly-named legislation in the Senate sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold to provide for reform in the political broadcasting arena. Their legislation would require broadcasters, as part of their public interest obligations, to air two hours of CCD per week, for a total of six weeks prior to an election. It also would provide for a system of vouchers to give free air time to candidates and parties, and make changes to the lowest-unit charge requirements. The bill faced stiff opposition from broadcasters and those who feel it is unconstitutional or overburdening. It was read twice and then sent to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, where it died. It has not been reintroduced in the 109th session (Library of Congress 2005). However, the FCC recently held hearings in preparation for its rulemaking regarding the public interest obligations for the transition to digital television, and thus immediate atten- 80 |