[IP] The Scarcity Rationale for Regulating Traditional Broadcasting: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed by John Berresford
Title: The Scarcity Rationale for Regulating Traditional Broadcasting: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed by John Berresford
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From: John Berresford <John.Berresford@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:21:29 -0500
To: <dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Another Article by John Berresford
Dear Friend/Colleague/Former Student:
I thought you might be interested in yet another paper written by me.
It’s titled “The Scarcity Rationale for Regulating Traditional Broadcasting: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed” and is an FCC Media Bureau Staff Research Paper.
<<March 17 2005 - as posted.pdf>>
You can also see it at http://www.fcc.gov/mb/scarcityrat.pdf <http://www.fcc.gov/mb/scarcityrat.pdf> .
U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the 1960s and before base government regulation of over-the-air TV and radio on the notion that there are few channels, fewer than there are people who want to speak. This, the decisions said, justifies giving traditional broadcasters fewer First Amendment rights than newspapers, movies, books, cable TV, etc.
In a 1984 decision, the Supreme Court invited the FCC and Congress to say that The Scarcity Rationale no longer made sense. My paper attempts to make that showing. The paper is not a statement of position by the FCC or the Media Bureau, but it is a statement on the FCC’s web page.
The paper notes that The Scarcity Rationale misunderstands physics, economics, efficient resource allocation, recent field measurements, and modern technology. It does not fit today’s marketplace. Americans today have all the channels, voices, and viewpoints of UHF TV and FM radio, cable TV, satellite-based TV and radio, Digital TV and radio, and the shared media of the Internet (with millions of bloggers and billons of web pages) and WiFi and WiMax. On these media, voices and viewpoints that were never heard in the heyday of The Big Three Networks are heard, and many have found huge audiences rivaling the old networks’.
I can promise you that this will be the last Beresford publication for a while.
John Berresford
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March 17 2005 - as posted.pdf
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