The Great Giveaway Is a TV Robbery

There never really was any doubt that the Clinton crowd would do it, but now the great giveaway is upon us and we should at least mark the year, the day, the hour, that billions of dollars worth of public property is turned over to private interests.

We speak here of the broadcasting spectrum. Heaven alone knows why anyone would want to see the cretinous images broadcast to our television screens in even sharper relief, but the appliance and electronics industries strongly desire it, and so, not far down the road, we will have digitalized TV broadcasting, which means you’ll have to buy a new TV set.

As they shift from analog to digitalized transmissions, the broadcasting companies want the government--custodian of the spectrum--to allot them extra “transition” frequencies, so that they can transmit on both the old and the new systems. And here’s where the issue of the great giveaway raises its dollar-bedizened head: Will the government (We the People) simply hand over new frequencies that may, given technological developments, one day allow not merely one, but several new channels for the happy recipient who will coin billions out of the People’s gift to him? It’s the oldest story in America: Privatize the gain, nationalize the loss.

The Clinton administration, guided by Al Gore, is now set to hand the new frequencies over to the industry for essentially nothing. The giveaway is all but finalized, it seems, with little dissent from Congress, which is thoroughly cowed by the immensely powerful broadcasting lobby. The most visible opponent after Bob Dole, who railed last year against the “billion-dollar giveaway” augured by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, has been Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who favors auctioning off slots on the video spectrum (reserving nine for law enforcement) to pay off a multibillion dollar chunk of the national debt. McCain calls the “offensive” launched by the broadcasting lobby “the strongest I’ve seen in Washington.”

If the new frequencies were auctioned, they would fetch anywhere from $11 billion to more than $70 billion--a small price for the Murdochs and Eisners of the world for indefinite control of the airwaves. But why pay for what you can have for free? Vice President Gore, along with FCC head Reed Hundt, is pushing for the giveaway with the caveat that broadcasters be subjected sometime in the future to “public interest requirements.” In other words, give the fox the chicken coop with a good behavior code to be negotiated later. The whole history of the broadcasting industry since 1934 shows vividly that public interest mandates on commercial broadcasters have never worked.

The great giveaway meshes nicely with last year’s White House agreement with broadcasters that stations broadcast three hours of “educational” shows for children each week; it’s a wonderful access point for the advertising industry.

Delegations of advertisers descended on the capital last year in White House summits to propose future roles for advertisers, such as sitting on a council that would define quality programming and creating ads for so-called educational shows to be printed on soda containers and fast-food trays.

The solution that, needless to say, is not on the table, is to lease the spectrum. This, says Robert McChesney, journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, would maintain the public’s right to access the spectrum and make significant cash from an open and competitive bidding process. The public would have the option to revoke the licenses, making We the People at least the de jure owners of what is (at least currently) ours.

The final insult: Gore and Hundt are promoting the idea of the gratified corporate recipients of frequencies giving a tiny sliver of free time for political broadcasts by Democrats and Republicans. Now there’s a bold definition of public ownership. Give your big contributors--the broadcasters have spread their money lavishly between Republicans and Democrats--billions of dollars worth of spectrum in return, then thank them for promising to think about a tip.

Two rays of sunlight: As the cable companies cut C-Span from their channels, consumers are becoming angrily aware of the frailty and vulnerability of quality broadcasting. And Internet users are powerfully aware of similar commercial pressures. Though the spectrum giveaway has been poorly reported, perhaps it is not too late for public uproar.