It could happen. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps could be the next chairman of the agency.

All it would take is for a Democrat to win the White House next year (an increasingly likely event) and to promote Copps (not so likely, but possible).

For most broadcasters, he's a reason to vote Republican.

During his six years as a commissioner, Copps has vigorously opposed loosening ownership regulations and made it clear that any new privileges the FCC grants broadcasters will be laden with serious, new public interest obligations.

Copps isn't inclined to give anything away.

Copps has also been an enthusiastic regulator of broadcast programming, a sure vote for tough indecency fines. And he's now indicated he would follow the same path on TV violence, if given the authority by Congress.

What really bugs broadcasters about Copps is that even as a member of the FCC's Democratic minority he has been highly effective in pushing his personal agenda.

Working with outside groups, Copps has managed to slow FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's effort to relax ownership restrictions to a point where many believe it may not happen at all.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY Editor Harry A. Jessell, Copps shares his regulatory philosophy, which holds that broadcasters must do more to earn the privilege of using the public airwaves and must be actively policed to make sure they don't harm children.

Let's say the Democrats don't screw it up in 2008 and you become the next chairman of the FCC. What's on your agenda?

Well, that is such a presumption. Even to try to answer something like that might be interpreted to be a little bit overreaching, but, if you want to engage in fantasy land for a couple of minutes, I guess it would be the same priorities I've been talking about since I got here.

No. 1 would be I want to get something done on media and reinvigorating some public interest responsibilities that have almost completely disappeared since the 1980s.

I'd like to do something on the United States's historic performance with regard to broadband penetration. I say that not just from the standpoint of social do-goodism, but from the standpoint of the competitiveness of the country because I think we're paying a horrible price for the sorry job we've done.

And then the other issue would be homeland security. I supposed in a way that's always got to be a priority because the safety of the people is the first obligation of a public servant. The sad fact is that we are not appreciably better prepared for the next terror attack or the next big hurricane than we were when we had the last one of each of those.

I don't think the American people are going to be in a mind to listen to excuses from the private sector or from regulatory agencies or from anybody else if we don't have interoperable communications and a little better disaster preparedness and public safety backup.

Those would be my big three.

In terms of public safety, I would argue that broadcasters are the ones that did their jobs on 9/11 and after Katrina. They were there. It was the government that didn't show up.

I've gone out of my way to praise what the broadcast industry did. After 9/11, they were on the air commercial free, broadcasting for days and days and it brought a lot of people together.

Of course, we've got to make sure that we've got those stations as resilient and robust as they can be. They're an important part of the equation, absolutely.

Given what you just said, why do you look at broadcasters' public interest obligations as something that needs to be fixed or reinvigorated?

We used to have a minimal set of public interest obligations. When broadcasters came in to be re-licensed, we made an affirmative judgment that they were going out and talking to their listeners and their peers about the kind of programming they wanted to hear, they had been doing real local news, they were covering community events, community sports, they were encouraging localism, they were encouraging diversity.

I think we've gotten away from some of that, and I don't just blame the industry. I blame the government, too, for letting that happen.

I'm not proposing anything that's supermicroregulatory. I'm not proposing something just like we did in the 1950s because this is the 21^st century now. But there's got to be a way to get this system back on track a little bit and infuse it with a little localism and diversity.

You don't think there's localism out there now? You don't think all those TV stations out there are running around covering local events?

I think there | More …