Consumer Technology Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr’s wide-ranging conversation Jan. 8 at CES in Las Vegas gave broadcasters a lot to think about when it comes to their future. It also prompted a couple of my own thoughts.
(If you missed it, C-SPAN carried the conversation, which is available here.)
The future of local TV, general support for ATSC 3.0 at the commission, possible readjustment of the network-affiliate relationship and spectrum use and policy were among the highlights. Here, let’s focus on another: the public-interest obligation of broadcasters.
Setting the stage for discussing the public-interest obligation, Carr reminded the audience of the privilege of having a broadcast license and what that means to broadcasters when it comes to retransmission consent and ultimately must-carry dollars.
“[Broadcasting is] a very, very unique distribution medium…because the government is picking a winner and loser,” he said. “You get a license; you get this microphone; you get to speak; you don’t necessarily get to conduct yourself the same way you would if you run a podcast or a soapbox or a cable channel.”
For broadcasters who don’t like that obligation, Carr offered a couple of solutions: turn in your license and transition to a cable channel, start a podcast, become a YouTube channel or bid on your spectrum in an auction, “maybe let[ting] everyone have a fair and free shot at purchasing that spectrum without the public-interest obligation,” he said.
However, at the risk of revealing my naiveté, how many local TV broadcasters truly are clamoring to shed their public-interest obligation? On the whole, when have local TV stations not lived up to this obligation? Certainly not during tornadoes, hurricanes, incoming missile attacks (remember the Hawaii false alarm?), earthquakes and other emergencies.
On the contrary, unprompted by regulators. the TV industry has attempted to up its game in these situations with Advanced Emergency Alerting & Information (AEI&A), a built-in feature of the ATSC 3.0 standard. However, AEI&A—just like other 3.0 enhancements—can’t fully come to fruition until the industry can move forward on sunsetting 1.0.
Nor have they failed to serve the interests of the public each morning, noon and night when it comes to local news. Carr himself acknowledged in his comments that, given the decline of daily newspapers, local newscasts offer “the last of the real ‘gumshoe reporting.’”
My second observation is the 1934 Communications Act didn’t simply mandate
a public interest obligation. There’s also the “convenience and necessity” portion of the phrase.
It seems to me to be counter to the spirit of TV broadcasters’ obligation to serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity” if the TV sets that the public watches are unable to provide the greatest convenience (think personalization and interactivity) and necessity (think AEI&A evacuation maps in flooding) that local TV broadcasters can deliver.
