Broadcasting's Deregulated Future

Report Outline
Forces of Change in Broadcasting
Broadcasting as a Public Trust
Technology's Deregulatory Potential
Special Focus

Forces of Change in Broadcasting

Proposals to Drop FCC's Rules on Radio

Deregulation fever has hit broadcasting, and the ensuing debate about the role of the free market versus that of government regulation is likely to dominate discussions of broadcasting policy for several years. Deregulation of television was the theme of a conference on network television held Feb. 2–3 at the University of California at Los Angeles. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates all broadcasting, is currently drawing up a plan to deregulate radio, as a test for the possibility of lifting much of the regulation of television and other aspects of broadcasting, including cable TV.

In the House of Representatives, a new version of a bill introduced last year to rewrite the Communications Act of 1934, the basic law of broadcasting, is being drafted under the guidance of Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin, D-Calif., chairman of the Communications Subcommittee. His aim is to make broadcasting more responsive to market forces, and observers say there is a good chance of passage sometime in this session of Congress or the next.

“For the first time in 50 years of regulation, we stand on the brink of major changes in the regulatory framework governing telecommunications,” the UCLA conference was told by Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the court that hears most appeals related to the FCC. Bazelon's message was that regulation grew out of the government's desire for broadcasting to serve the public interest rather than the station owners' profit interest, but it has not worked that way. Instead, Bazelon said, regulation has often been used to protect entrenched economic interests against competition from outsiders.