Who serves on the judiciary and commerce communities. The text that opposition to the merger. This was hosted by the georgetown law institute. Good afternoon. Welcome im so excited to see this crowd, to talk about the merger of the future media ownership. My name is gigi and im a fellow with the Georgetown Institute for technology. I want to thank a couple of folks, the institute for public representation which is part of georgetown law center, the Benton Foundation the mozilla foundation. Also senator blumenthal of connecticut who your be hearing from soon and jamie was a Research Fellow at georgetown and alexander who is head of the institute for you may have heard she broke her leg when she and her son or daughter were shopping. A shoplifter knocked them over. I was in there the day before. Anyway if you could send well wishes to her. Also the other georgetown students gathered by andy, panelists helping today with logistics. The me set the stage. In may Sinclair Broadcast Group announced its intention. It is seeking approval on the department of justice for the merger, which if consummated will result in sinclair owning 233 stations covering 72 of american viewers. The next largest will have 70 fewer stations. At the same time the fcc will come out tomorrow including newspaper broadcast, the tv radio and the local tv. Theyve reinstated a rule that counts ultrahigh how many of you know what a uhf station is . Anybody under the age of 40 now . I saw three hands. Or of an opportunity to talk about that later and if that was a real to be reinstated whether engaged in reregulation. The other thing the fcc did was eliminate the main studio which requires a local broadcaster to maintain his studio and its community of license. Since i cannot Important Role but when you combine consolidation with getting rid of having a presence in the local community is important. These are timely with the votes coming tomorrow. Lets talk about of the mergers in the Public Interest and if this makes sense in the stand age. You have an internet, do they make sense. Senator blumenthal is not here yet, when he comes we let him speak regardless of what were doing. Well start off with her debate will focus on ownership rules limit follow with the panel and then have audience questionandanswer. Im knocking to do a thing or a column people. If you have a question right a time. Raise your hand and walk around and show people who you are to be shy, they will be collecting the cards and jamie will go through the one have a whole lot of time but hopefully folks will stay after. Lets start with the debate. Real lucky. I think at 930 i got an email from john whos going to argue in favor of the ownership rule that he was too ill to come. I was not happy the thankfully he brought a substitute have known for years jerry with one media, literally at the last minute he agreed to debate you may know him from his appearances on msnbc. His principle of the good friend group and adjunct professor. Without further do each debater will have seven minutes of then you have two minutes to respond. Thank you. I have to say again not the only one whos grateful that jerry showed up. I am too. He got lastminute notice and stepped in that deserves our thanks. Now with that i would like to take him on. Will hear it a lot today and tomorrow about how the world has changed. Since the ownership rules were first promulgated that was a little bit ago. Theres the internet, cable tv, look at Different Social Media platforms. Therefore these antiquated oldfashioned broadcast roles have to go. Theory continues thats the only way we can have free over their broadcast tv. The only way to survive in the modern world. If thats where the story ended at have to concede that you win. For me its not where the story and. Its not where the story began. It was when broadcasters got a great deal. A trade are going to give you free spectrum licenses in every market these that are worth billions of dollars today you can sell them if you want to get billions of dollars more for free. Doesnt stop there. The laws passed give broadcasters more value. Do the broadcaster guaranteed distribution and cable and satellite tv. Guaranteed. You are given a legal monopoly under the copyright law to provide network programming. Youre the only one permitted to do so. If i want it by a newspaper from another city i can go and find content from anywhere in the world, but not with broadcast tv. The American People from time to time over worried about the budget and taxes like we are right now we ask is there any possible way what if we charged a fee no say the broadcasters, no fees. We want it for free as we always had. The American People are supposed to get something in return. We get free over the air programming. Its for free. Number two, we get local news, weather and sports. These different choices and forms of technology according to the trust, 82 of americans across all age groups trust local broadcast the most of the local news. Local broadcast is trusted the most for local news. By the way the survey found the local broadcast news they trust more than their own family for what is going on locally. Now, in my view if you want all the freebies its got to come with the favors in return that we asked for. You have to provide local news and a variety of voices. We will get rid of these regulations but youre not going to have them to carry anymore or the copyright exclusivity anymore and guess what broadcasters in the world of broadcasters. We are going to ask ourselves what happens when broadcasters get bigger and i will give you a preview. And the tribune that attempts to buy this transaction has a better track record. In fact when we did a study of local news at both companies and found that the top three stations that provide local news to both companies provide twice as much. Sinclair must prove to you today that ive been getting bigger, the local news that they provide is either going to be just as good or even better. What are we getting from this bargain and why should the limits of the lifted so they can get even bigger. Thanks, david for the invitation. I havent read all of the pleadings in the preceding. I first worked for chairman whiteley and commissioner lee back in 1975 through the first staff time reviewing the station sales in the mid70s to my time with the chairman and the Reagan Administration with some of the rules in the ets to cope with them advising the owners in the past 30 years the question today is whether we need the rules for the broadcast ownership in the age of ubiquitous highresolution internet streaming, new overthetop services and competition from the distribution. Todays hyper competitive marketplace antitrust principles are more than adequate to govern the consolidation and television broadcasting. The arbitrary definitions of competition and diversity all of which were chosen decades ago as political compromises rather than in response to the rigorous thoughts about how this works. Free over the air broadcasting is a vital treasure. The advertising markets were the highest and best use of the spectrum they would urge you to consider this. If over the air broadcasting didnt exist and allocated the spectrum today what investors provide capital and would the new broadcasters be able to outbid the internet or the multichannel platforms to acquire the most popular programming and produce hours and hours of live news and every market. Weve chosen to findings by allowing broadcasters to compete with revenue in the marketplace. To broadcast nfl games nobody requires the nfl to distribute its programming on a platform available for free or sell games to nbc when espn and fox sports will pay more. For every minute of programming and every dollar of revenue they will say broadcasters have special interest obligations and they got the spectrum for free and that justifies limits on control. The problem is one does not follow the other. That justifies the regulations that thwart the competitiveness and drives me crazy. Very few stations are in the hands of the licensees. To the incumbent phone companies for free with no Public Interest responsibilities and the same was true for the licenses issued for free for those who pay the market price. More to the plaintiff how they got the stations and limits on ownership is an intellectual non sequitur. The fccs ownership rules have very harmful effects in the market. I was an active witness in the unintended consequence of making washington, d. C. A monopoly newspaper town when they made him separate the washington star and it died. Nationally, we do not need ownership caps because those particular rules prevent new competition to existing platforms. As preston pointed out in his washington journal oped they have the effect of freezing National Television to abc, cbs and fox they have 100 . Why shouldnt others have the same option . Locally, we dont need ownership restrictions either because we need to allow those that are willing to invest in local markets to organize in a way that allowed them to be as platforms and in the system we have chosen in the finance broadcasting, profits with computing platforms are not just good, they are essential even if you believe broadcast ownership should be regulated beyond antitrust, next question is what is right for 2018 and beyond. I would object that as preposterous to restrictions on the books written at the time people learned of the pearl harbor bombings from the over the air networks before facebook, google, amazon, netflix, directv. And when at t was a longdistance provider whether that is the best framework for the 21st century. I sometimes feel like rip van winkle. The world has changed. [laughter] the u. S. Shows the marketplace profits and that was easy when they had no competitive competition except for each other. Restrictive ownership limits have bad consequences but they were not existential threats. If you want the marketplace to find a way to bring you local news, nfl games, highcost scripted programming for everyone you haveveryone you hae marketplace figure out how to do it because programmers are going to sell to the highest bidder every time coming and the government isnt going to subsidize. Thank you. When i said i was happy to be here, i take it all back. You ended by saying the marketplace will figure it out and im coming back to the point i made earlier if this were the real marketplace the government would have no role whatsoever as long as they have the thumb on the scale providing guaranteed distribution and yes, free licenses at the time of her competitors have to buy them, we and the American People get something in return. It is an anthology i use all the time. 29 of the 32 nfl stadiums in the country were built with taxpayer money. That is your money and it went right into the pocket of a billionaire owner and what do you get in return for that flex 400 per family or maybe it gets blocked altogether or maybe you have to subscribe to the network to get it. As long as the American Public is giving something to the industry we have every right to ask for something in return even if it isnt efficient from the economic standpoint and i think the way to handle the debate is to say okay, we do want over the air broadcasting and we do want things available to the public for free. Those are all great things but you only get to argue that the rules should go if you can show somehow theres a disconnect between the value we get in the diversity of voices on the one platform that is most for local news, broadcast and so i see nothing and i mean zero in the filings submitted that would show that. In fact any time one of us suggests the question they could answer like can you show us how the local news high uranium content compares to the rest or even the company you want to buy, no answer except maybe platitudes like we are going to bring local basketball. Thats great if i can compare it to how the rest does. So once again we can talk about the free market all day long but as long as they are subsidizing this industry, we get a say and we want local news and local diversity. [applause] when senator blumenthal overrides, we will give him the podium. Ive been corrected. Let me briefly introduced the speakers and i believe that their biographies are on the wall Center Website that they are also very easy to find in any Search Engine and im not going to name any particular Search Engines. Look them up because they are all terrific. I feel very lucky to be able to sit here on this panel. To my right we have the Senior Vice President for strategy and policy person Sinclair Broadcast Groups. The counsel for the tribune corporation. Its a big deal to have the representatives of the parties. Then we have the director for policy and Legal Affairs for the coalition and directly to her right is the association of black owned broadcasters and is my mentor and longtime friend and a pain in the whatever, Andy Schwartzman who spend the senior counsel and attorney at the Georgetown Institute for public representation. Welcome everybody. The first question i want to ask, we have to start petitions. Wine is an industry that gets a lot of government tax payer benefits and is something to the public and one of the things they owe is the diversity of the voices and on the other hand, we have a competitor in the marketplace and with a freemarket whatever needs to be done to make sure broadcasters survive. I thought i would ask anybody on the panel if they want to respond what is it or is it a little bit of both . A lot of the points he makes are not disputable except we got our section for free and if that is the case i will be expecting a check back in addition to the 85 billion that our company paid over the years and acquisitions that weve made. So there is an investment in spectrum regardless of the origin of how the original licenses were issued. But the other part of the picture david painted is what you see before you and it is basically the environment in which we try to use these socalled government benefits to create a selfsustaining financially solid ability to deliver local news. This is a slide showing where broadcasters are in the middle of the ecosystem in which we have to work. We have networks from whom we buy programming, 50, 60 billion then this is where we distribute our programming. To summarize where we are in the landscape, the major challenges in which we are supposed to provide all the Public Benefits include major declines in the primary Revenue Source which is local advertising. Major consultation of satellite and cable companies. Consolidation of National Programming networks. Increased cost including sports. Fragmentation of the viewership and entry of competitors such as apple, google, netflix and facebook. I want to leave that out to set the scene but its not as black and white as david presented and i will stop there. Lets talk about the spectr spectrum. We own the spectrum, the public owns the spectrum. We are the landlords and they are the tenets. Sinclair doesnt own the spectrum. What sinclair bought was licenses. Licenses for eight years which expire and they have the right to renewal if they earn it unfortunately the fcc rubberstamps that they are supposed to earn it with Public Service but make no mistake about it, we own the spectrum and you need to view it in that context when you realize what youre saying is because we own the spectrum we can set the appropriate conditions to make sure it is used to benefit the public and that includes ensuring competition and diversity so when they say antitrust can take care of it, the Communications Act is about diversity, and diversity is ultimately the most important thing we are trying to get here. When i hear that this is over spectrum, it really turns me upside down. We own it, they dont i am not sure it is that fruitful of the discussion to talk about who owns the spectrum quite the way we are. I think all local broadcasters feel obligations to their communities. Thats what sets local broadcasters apart. The trade david described is not accurate. There is no requirement that they provide local news. Many local broadcasters, some of the biggest, many local broadcasters to provide local news and the way they dont is that its usually expensive. Its because they live in these communities and if they can afford it, they invest deeply in their relationships wit with thr communities but to do that it is not a government requirement, that is something you do because you think it is the right way to run your business. David talks about the fact that tribune puts on more local news than sinclair, but theres actually a very simple explanation for a good part of that which is our biggest market in new york, chicago and la we have either cw affiliate for independence. You run local news because you are not required by the Network Partner to have Good Morning America or the today show or what they put on and reclaim your u2 put on whe when you wera Network Affiliate where sinclair did most of their biggest stations are Network Affiliates and therefore they are required in circumstances to run network programming. Both are deeply devoted to local news and the reason for that is it is our way of delivering value to the consumers and david said one other thing i will point out which is we get automatic distribution. Its true local broadcasters can choose must carry to get the local distribution, but that is isnt what sinclair and tribune and the major broadcasters do. He makes a very important point because in some of the smaller markets we have awardwinning newscasts that do an excellent job year after year the ad revenue isnt enough so they are not profitable. We wouldnt be able to deliver the very same thing david wants us to deliver. We have a national audience. Can one of you explain to people what that is . There are two ways you can get distribution on the platfo platform. If you are subscribing to cable or satellite it happens in one of