User Fees Urged for Airwaves

President Clinton’s budget proposes raising $1 billion a year from a new levy on broadcasters and other users of the nation’s airwaves--but the television industry appears confident it can defeat any such measure.

The proposal would require that Congress pass legislation to give the Federal Communications Commission the authority to charge user fees for licenses that the agency now allocates to private companies for little or no cost. Alternatively, the Administration said in its budget proposal, “legislation will be proposed to expand FCC authority to auction additional spectrum and other valuable public resources for private use.”

The proposal is part of a broader government effort to gain revenue from valuable broadcast spectrum. The government is currently auctioning slices of the airwaves for a new breed of advanced wireless paging and telephone technologies called personal communications services, a sale that could raise as much as $10 billion.

Proposals to levy fees on current users of the airwaves, such as TV broadcasters, have been advanced in Congress nearly every year since 1990 and met with little success.

“We more than pay for these airwaves by spending millions of dollars on programming that we provide to viewers for free,” said Doug Wills, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Broadcasters, a Washington-based trade group. “We are against financing the FCC off of the backs of broadcasters.”