Home shopping and the public interest

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 15:10:32 -0500
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: djw@eff.org (Daniel J. Weitzner)
Subject: Home shopping and the public interest


As part of regulations implementing the 1992 Cable Act, the FCC recently
had to decide whether home shopping channels were legally entitled, along
with local broadcast TV stations, to be carried on cable networks.  The
Commission found that home shopping stations serve the "public interest"
and therefore had the right to demand that local cable operators carry
their broadcasts, whether cable operators want to or not.  Commissioner
Ervin Duggan wrote a dissent, part of which seems worthy of attention:


   I must dissent to today's action on the question of  Home Shopping  stations
and the public interest....   The view being pressed upon the Commission is
that  home shopping  pitches are not commercials; that  home shopping 
messages, instead, constitute education and entertainment.


[....]


   Today, sadly, the Commission deliberately and explicitly puts forward a
minimalist definition of the public interest standard, at precisely the moment
when we should be mending and refurbishing that tattered banner and lifting it
high over a broadcast culture that is, to borrow Gerard Manley Hopkins' poignant
phrase, "all . . . seared with trade." I sympathize with the difficulties my
colleagues face, given the implications of this vote for the must-carry
provisions of the 1992 Cable Act.  I sympathize with those  home shopping 
licensees who, as minority members, have embraced this format as an entry path
into the broadcast industry; I know several of them and admire their
entrepreneurial efforts.  This question, nevertheless, presents deep questions
of public policy and principle that, in the end, prevent me from voting with my
colleagues.  My quarrel, in the end, is not with these licensees, who 
after all have been operating under the Commission's rules since  home shopping 
was introduced nearly a decade ago; it is with a regulatory philosophy that
seems no longer to care about quality.


[....]


   In 1929, the old Radio Commission, predecessor of today's FCC, set forth its
definition of the public interest standard in words that required broadcasters
to present diverse programming including "entertainment, music of both classical
and lighter grades, religion, education and instruction, important public
events, discussions of public questions, weather, market reports and . . .
news." Are Congress and the Commission ready now to abandon this ideal?  I hope
not, and I cast my dissent in the hope that some day Congress and the Commission
will find it possible to visit this question again.


   Until we do, I will think of the public interest standard as a sort of
once-handsome thoroughbred so abused and neglected that it has finally broken
down in the middle of the track.  Perhaps we can take it back to the paddock in
the hope that, with care and love, it can produce offspring to recall and renew
the beauty of the original.  If not, let us simply put the poor beast out of its
misery once and for all.




...................................................................
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Daniel J. Weitzner, Senior Staff Counsel
Electronic Frontier Foundation
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