Posted
August 11, 2005

Reclaiming the Nation's Airwaves

Reclaiming the nation's airwaves.

In the sixties, Gil Scott-Heron warned that “the revolution will not be televised.” (Yes, son, there once was a time when mainstream music was actually culturally relevant…) Of course, we’re now in an era of diminishing expectations, so even the struggle for media reform is not going to be televised. The omnivorous media machine has plenty of time for celebrity eccentricity, vulgarity and tabloid titillation (what did happen to that girl in Aruba?), but somehow it can’t find the time to talk about how the public airwaves, worth tens of billions of dollars, might actually be used for the public’s benefit.

It is refreshing, then, to learn about a new report by Common Assets Defense Fund that shines a spotlight on the growing movement of ordinary citizens and civic groups to take charge of media policy. “ The State of the Spectrum: The Movement to Reclaim the Nation’s Airwaves” (download as a pdf file) is a useful overview of the struggle by diverse community-based efforts to save and expand public media.

What’s at stake?

In Minot, North Dakota, the town could not be warned about a toxic chemical cloud caused by a spill because Clear Channel had taken over the local radio station, and there was no one there to broadcast an alert. Because of their proximity to Seattle, the people of Bainbridge and Vashon Islands in Washington State are not eligible to start a low-power FM radio station that could broadcast community news and emergency alerts.

In a more pro-active vein, San Francisco is planning to build free wireless Internet access in the parks of Chinatown, which are popular gathering places for residents because apartments there are notoriously small. Dozens of other towns want to follow this example, if only to help promote economic development and empower local government services to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

One of the major shifts that media reform advocates are seeking, writes Adam Werbach in the Introduction to the report, is to begin to treat spectrum as a commons, instead of assigning exclusive licenses to commercial broadcasters. New technology now enables shared, distributed uses of the airwaves, much as Internet wires are used simultaneously by millions of people.

Failing to move to a commons paradigm for spectrum management is actually a free speech issue. As Ben Scott of Free Press told CADF, “If the government treats spectrum as if it were property, then the government is required to give the public the rights to use of its airwaves. If there’s no scarcity, then continuing to award licenses for airwaves prohibits someone’s speech, which is a First Amendment issue.”

Can the public actually prod and pressure Congress and the FCC to treat spectrum as a commons? An important wedge in this campaign is wireless Internet access. Can it grow wide enough, fast enough? If enough people come to rely upon the extreme convenience and low cost of wireless broadband access, the political consequences of making such access closed, proprietary and expensive will be far more difficult. Right now, wireless is still in its early stages β€” and telcos and cable companies surely do not want an independent grassroots competitor, especially if it is backed by local and state governments.

Check out The State of the Spectrum and begin to get a sense of the new alliances that are a-bornin’ to secure community wireless and other public-spirited uses of the public airwaves. Here’s my dream β€” to see the struggle for media reform actually covered on television, perhaps even by serioius journalists willing to ask Rupert Murdoch (Fox), Sumner Redstone (Viacom), Robert Iger (Disney) and Richard Parsons (Time Warner), on camera, how they purport to serve as trustees of the public airwaves.