COPPS PLAN TO BOOST LOCALISM WON’T FLY

Monday was ugly for many of the CBS O&Os.

As local newspapers in CBS markets dutifully reported Tuesday, management lopped off the heads of anchors, reporters and behind-the-camera staff.

WBZ Boston apparently had the bloodiest ax at the end of the day, eliminating about 20 positions.

Summing up the next day, the New York Times calculated that the layoffs at the station involved between 3 percent and 5 percent of the stations’ personnel.

CBS has not been forthcoming on the why. The Times quoted an anonymous station executive saying that CBS had not ordered the job cuts, but that the stations “had to deal with the budget numbers.”

 That’s cute. The executive is suggesting the cuts at the stations had nothing to do with corporation’s falling revenues and stock price. I wonder who sets the “budget numbers.”

The CBS station spokesman didn’t bother returning my call. I guess CBS is not particularly proud of what it did.

Fortunately, we don’t need CBS to explain what’s going on. We have FCC Commissioner Michael Copps.

Writing in The Nation, Copps blamed Reagan-era FCC Chairman Mark Fowler and the deregulation for the downsizing of TV newsrooms.

The Fowler FCC dismantled “nearly every public-interest obligation on the books and to enable a tsunami of media consolidation,” Copps writes.

“The results have been disastrous—reporters fired, newsrooms shuttered and our civic dialogue dumbed down to fact-free opinions and ideological bloviation.”

So, according to Copps, TV stations now have “budget numbers” to deal with not because they have been under competitive assault from cable and satellite and the Internet, but because the FCC lightened the regulatory load on them 20 years ago.

Copps’ solution, of course, is to bring back those regulations and essentially force stations to do more news and public affairs programming.

“We need to get back to renewing every three years—and add enforceable guidelines to encourage coverage of real local news, culture and civic affairs. Second, let's revisit media ownership—this means not just preventing bad new rules (like letting more newspapers own TV stations) but revisiting the bad old rules that made this mess in the first place.”

Copps’s hero is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s FCC Chairman James Lawrence Fly, “a card-carrying New Deal trustbuster” who opposed domination of radio by CBS and NBC and imposed strict broadcast ownership limits during the 1940s.

Now we could all dismiss Copps’s opinions as quaint, harmless musings on regulation in the days when electronic media only meant AM radio, except that they now seem to be shaping broadcast policymaking at the FCC.

Teamed with fellow Democrat Jonathan Adelstein and, somewhat inexplicably, Republican Chairman Kevin Martin, Copps has somehow maneuvered the FCC into requiring stations to report in detail the types of programming they air—the so-called enhanced disclosure rules—and into launching a proceeding to create local programming quotas.

How Copps and his accomplices think these rules will yield better local programming is difficult to fathom. They may yield more, but not better.

The NAB has recognized the threat that the Copps-inspired regulations represents. Last week, it challenged the enhanced disclosure rules in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

It is also trying to block the rules from going into effect at the Office of Management and Budget on the grounds that the rules are an unwarranted paperwork burden.

Meanwhile, it has launched a lobbying campaign to persuade members of Congress to write the FCC in opposition to the local quota rulemaking.

Both efforts are to be applauded and encouraged. The NAB hired Wilmer Hale, a highly capable D.C. law firm, to lead the charge on the lawsuit. And I’m sure it is prepared to go for an injunction if the NAB’s OMB gambit fails (as it probably will).

The trick to the letter-writing campaign is not only to get a lot of lawmakers to write, but to get the right lawmakers to write—the ones who sit on the commerce committees and have oversight of the FCC.

Every broadcaster with any sway with a representative or senator needs to join in the effort. And the NAB also needs to make sure that every broadcast lobby in town—that means non-members Fox and CBS, too—is fully engaged.

This is a big one.

You’re going to hate life if the FCC presents you with a long list of federally certified, do-gooder programming you have to air each week.

And card-carrying New Deal trustbusters like Copps are hard to beat. 

***** ***** ***** ***** ****

While James Lawrence Fly was trying to figure out how to stop the consolidation of AM radio, James Quello was battling a far more tangible threat—the German army in Europe—as a combat officer.

After the war, Quello returned home and enjoyed a 29-year career in broadcasting. In 1974, he launched a second career as a Democratic FCC commissioner, becoming an effective and consistent advocate of broadcasting until his retirement in 1997.

At 93, but he continues to be a powerful voice for broadcasting. He says what needs to be said and he says it in the same clear, straightforward style that characterized his speeches and statements throughout his Washington years.

Last month, in an op-ed piece in Broadcasting & Cable, Quello blasted the FCC’s local programming quota plan, calling it “grossly untimely” and a “blatant” violation of broadcasters’ First Amendment rights.

Such rules are also unnecessary, he said. “The government mandating localism for broadcasters is like the government mandating breathing for human beings. Localism is the very lifeblood of broadcasting.”

It would be a good idea to get a hard copy of Quello's column and send it to your congressional representatives, particularly Democrats who may think regulation is the only way.

Quello told me today he means every word of what he wrote. “It irks the hell out of me. I stayed up to four o’clock writing the damn thing.”

On April 21, Jim Quello turns 94. Let’s all wish him well.