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FCC Chairman Martin Proposes Local Boards of ‘Good and Great’

From Fred Johnson Blog, December 17, 2007

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is indulging in one of the FCC’s oldest, time honored traditions: making a lot of noise about “localism” and local programming, while creating policies that are destined to have the opposite effect.

As part of his efforts to have the FCC adopt rules that would relax the 32-year-old ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership, Martin proposes that, “Licensees should establish permanent advisory boards in each community (including representatives of underserved community segments) with which to consult periodically on community needs and issues,” and, that “The commission should adopt processing guidelines that will ensure that all broadcasters provide a significant amount of locally oriented programming.”

There is something very curious about a proposal to have our local broadcast license holders create local advisory boards, just now — particularly since it is coming from the FCC, an agency that has for the last 20 years charted new terrain in the land of regulatory capture. So what’s the problem, surely we are all for more local programming? And surely requiring broadcasters to take advice from local communities is desirable, what could be the downside? Well perhaps a great deal. Martin’s proposal comes at a moment of heightened media activism and citizen discontent with the US media system and media culture. A time that is abuzz with proposals for a more participatory and diverse media. The current broadcast media system and the local arrangements for delivering television, Internet services and wireless communications are roiling with change and economic restructuring. Communities are waking up to the fact that restructuring in the communication industries has resulted in unprecedented levels of ownership concentration and control of their media environments by private industry; and that withdrawal of traditional forms of government media oversight over the last 20 years have left communities with fewer and fewer local regulatory options.

So just now, not some other time, but now, when the whole media culture is turning over with change and activism, Martin proposes some tired old worn out concept like toothless community advisory boards of the ‘Good and the Great’! If you are having trouble imagining what that might look like then take a look at the boards that run the your local public television stations – you do know there are such boards don’t you? Well, the kind of advisory boards Martin is proposing would be even more conservative and enamored with the status quo and elitism, and they would be powerful allies of the entrenched incumbents holding media power in our communities.

Rather than thinking of Martin’s proposal in terms of incremental regulatory change, we should see this as a panicky move to stave off the coming wave of media change, particularly at the community level. Now, we have an opportunity to move toward a more participatory, democratic media environment or local public spheres, one where we can use media and our communications infrastructure to create social relationships that bind us together as communities, and enrich our lives in countless noncommercial and commercial ways. Windows of change like this do not open up that often and they do not remain open long. Let’s not lose sight of what is at stake and what is possible, just now.