"Take away the government protections, and the free TV system would die a natural death," said Thomas Hazlett, a former chief economist for the FCC and now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. "We should do something productive with the spectrum."
Two of the FCC's five members have called for a complete examination of industry practices, including whether broadcasters are living up to their public interest obligation.
"No one has a God-given right to use these airwaves for strictly commercial purposes," said Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, who was one of two dissenters in Monday's 3-2 vote.
In Copps' view, many Americans have been disenfranchised as broadcasters increasingly target the 18- to 49-year-old viewers for whom advertisers pay the most to reach.
Television, Copps said, "seems to have narrowed its mission to one of delivering eyeballs to advertisers.... That kind of television is tunnel vision, and the target audience of tunnel vision is no longer the majority but a small, albeit free-spending minority."
Safeguarding the public interest has been the cornerstone of the agreement between broadcasters and federal regulators since the dawn of the industry. After all, "broadcasting was a privilege," not a right, declared Democratic Sen. Clarence Dill of Washington, one of the lawmakers behind the Radio Act of 1927, which set the public interest standard.
Congress' aim in the 1927 act, as well as in follow-up legislation such as the Communications Act of 1934, was to keep advertising at a minimum while requiring licensees to inform and entertain according to local tastes and sensibilities.
As TVs became more commonplace in American homes during the 1950s, broadcast licensees were closely scrutinized every three years under a rigorous renewal process.
To prove they were worthy of keeping their licenses, stations were required to write proposals outlining their plans for meeting the public interest. Typically a station would poll 100 top community leaders on the 10 most important issues of the day and then promise in its proposal to devote so many hours a year to each of these topics.
Stations also were subject to "comparative hearings," in which other parties could petition for their licenses -- in part by claiming that they could better serve the public. Los Angeles' KHJ was tied up in litigation for 15 years as a result of one of these challenges, which claimed that its programming was second-rate. Walt Disney Co. ultimately ended up with the station and changed its call letters to KCAL. (KCAL is now owned by Viacom Inc.)
