We have a Supreme Court justice say he didnt want to get any radio cases. This seems very offputting but it turns out that the way we allocate radio spectrum, how we make Resources Available for the Wireless World were in to today is fascinating. And theres a political structure that was crafted in the 1927 radio acted everything is changing to wireless. But we have a lot of problems still with some of the very igid traditional oldfashioned into place in previous generations were trying to break away. Theres been a pattern of liberalization thats been extremely successful but we have a long way to go and so into place in me forth. Previous generations were these radio signals can still travel. Of course they can be used for communications. And radio transmit, radio receive. And we put stuff together all of a sudden youre in the Wireless World that kids grow up with. They think thats just part of society to pull out the phone nd text or snap. The first station in pittsburgh november 2nd 1920 prod casting election returns. The political element. Tremendously popular within two years 500 stations broadcasting across america. Now became contentious to use radio waves. We have had the science since 1985 but we hadnt had the innovation, the Business Model to create actual conflicts over broadcasters spude a lot of transmit power receivers with their programming. So the new age of wireless we had to come up with new rules and we had essentially common law first come first serve. If you had Radio Station transmitting with authorization which was proforma from the department of commerce you got to be there and continue until somebody else came along that you might want to share with ow you might want to sell to but there were rules in place. That actually created a political kickback on the one side the first station which became commercially successful didnt want new entry. They didnt want that kind of liberal policy to allow new band withsdz to be utilized. On the other side you would policy makers that wanted some control over this powerful new medium of expression. They wanted licensed broadcasters. So those interests came together and created the 1927 radio act. That act put a political process into place and youve often had this exact same coalition with powerful incumbent business interests getting together with policy makers to say that, well, this is going to be the Public Interest. There are going to be licenses cavered in fact, it has been called that quite regularly by regulators. And, that put into place things like the equal time rule that goes back to 1927 and the radio act. And even though things like the fulltime role did not work in the sense that they actually suppressed coverage of political candidates and debates. A fascinating aspect of president ial television debates. Those debates could not happen until we deregulated the equal time ill and made it possible for top candidates to get on the stage without 30 or 40 other Minor Party Candidates there. Even though these rules did not work well to produce the Public Interest outcome, they did work well for the interests of the political spectrum. Brian when did you start the book . [laughter] tom people ask about that. I say i have been writing this book since i was 5yearsold and it has been a career looking at how the economics and regulation Work Together in this space. I literally started on these issues in the late 1980s. I served at the federal Communications Commission in the early 1990s, and i have written many academic articles since. I started seriously writing this book about four years ago. Brian where is your home and what do you do other than write this book . Tom i grew up in los angeles, and i went to ucla. I taught at the university of california, davis. I moved to the east coast and ended up at George Mason University and northern virginia, and then three years ago, i moved down to south carolina. I teach at Clemson University. Go tigers. We are now in a different part of the world. Certainly different from the washington, d. C. Area, where we spent the last 15 years. Certainly different than california. It is an academic institution. Very good economics department, so i teach economics to undergraduate and graduate students alike. Brian what kind of things in our daily lives uses the spectrum . Does the iphone or any phone use the spectrum . Tom absolutely. It is routine now, a social amenity for kids growing up. They use computers that are internet connected through wireless, they use phones that are in networks or locally connected to broadband networks. In a general sense, even our fixed or wired Broadband Systems are part of the radio spectrum ecosystem. Spectrum in a tube. The highcapacity lines that distribute to most homes, Broadband Services to maybe a cable operator or telephone company, that is spectrum in a tube, and that is regulated some have the same, usually by the same agency in the United States and most other countries. Brian a lot of cars today have the pushbutton opening to the door. Garages have push a button, you know, far away from it. Spectrum use . Tom absolutely. Baby monitors, monitors and hospitals, sensing devices. There is a whole ecosystem now developing for what they call m to m, machine to machine to machine communications. In one vending machines call up Distribution Centers to say what they are out of. They need more granola bars and fewer m ms, or vice versa. When you have a car that is stolen, there might be a locator that uses a wireless communicator. When you have Something Like onstar, a crash and a car, that makes it an automatic phone call. Those are m to m devices where people are not making calls anymore periodically, they make calls when using cell phones. Audio, video, and we still have over the air broadcasting for television. That is largely in terms of the consumer end of things, shifted to cable, satellite, and over the top broadband distribution and cell phone reception for video, but we still allocate a very large swath of radio spectrum for essentially a 1939 technology. That is when tv started in terms of the regulators, putting aside spectrum. Brian i wanted to talk politics because you delve into this in your book, starting about page 139. You can pick up and go from there. A young new dealer emerged as a key defender of the agency. Texas congressman lyndon b. Johnson intervened with has speaker sam rayburn to support the commission and quash the budget cuts. What is the rest of the story . [laughter] tom this is one of those, you know, nifty tidbits you get from this political history of spectrum allocation. It turns out that there is a very powerful Georgia Southern democrat eugene cox in the early 1940s. Extremely powerful within the house. He, at the same time he was a congressman, was actually doing business as a lawyer, which he was. With Radio Stations getting renewals. License renewals. He was close to the line on what was ethical. The fcc at the time was headed by a man who in history has become rather well known. James fly. He later became head of the American Civil Liberties union. He stood up for Civil Liberties and against wiretapping. While he was fcc chair. He is very renowned in any contemporary versions. He is the best fcc chairman in history for what he stood up and did. One of the things he stood up to was this powerbroker in the house. Congressman cox. In fact, when it became known, reported in the press, that there had been this ethically dubious action by the congressman, flye did not back down. He scheduled that station for a hearing. Now that, in regulatory, in the clinical spectrum, that is a very hostile thing for an agency to do because now this station has to spend money for lawyers, they might lose a license. It generally is not going to happen that way but they still have a very significant expense and maybe some risk. So in any event, this congressman cox, he just went ballistic. He engineered a number of bills to be introduced and budget cuts to slash the fcc budget. This became quite something. A row challenge to the agency by the incumbent policy maker. A littleknown congressman from texas figured it out an opportunity and he ran in the background in under the radar to help salvage the fcc. Now, the thing that makes this story rather sensational and completely ironic is that as good a reputation as he had and has standing up for ethical conduct at the agency, this relationship between johnson and the fcc would save the fcc and led to johnson having the clout to engineer radio, later television licenses, that made johnson perhaps the wealthiest president in the history of the United States. Now, he always had a public story that these licenses had no effect. Ladybirds. Communityis a property state so it didnt matter. Ladybirds name on as much as the documentation as possible. There is no question. Johnson engineered stations, preempted competitors from getting competing stations, and made a fortune on tv and radio media licenses in austin, texas as a result of this relationship at the fcc in the early 1940s. It is really jawdropping when you see the nature of that political relationship. This is probably a sensational example. Not all of it is this corrupt. But that is certainly part of the story. Brian let me get the page here and read it. Page 144, you say that in in bethesda, maryland, phillips found extreme right wing broadcasting irrationally hostile to the president and his programs. Talking about donald and another man involved in this, the jfk years. What is the point of this . Tom the fairness doctrine. It turns out that when we went to this political system for allocating spectrum rights in 1927, within a couple of years, the regulators at the commission are renewing licenses, but very carefully noting that propaganda stations will not be allowed. Early on, in 1929, in a period, you have left wing stations, to use that political term, with eugene debs who bought a station in new york city. They wanted it for political reasons. They wanted to espouse their opinions. These were immediately dubbed propaganda stations by the regulars. And when they were renewed, they were told to be careful about expressing their opinions. And that was an interesting kind of attack on open and free dialogue by the Radio Commission that in 1984 became the federal Communications Commission. The in 19 34 became that in 1934 became the federal Communications Commission. There was further progress in this direction to keep the opinions quiet during the new deal, when, in fact, newspaper publishers, which were thought to be right wing and antinew deal, they were told they would face restrictions on owning Radio Stations. That was within the Roosevelt Administration to keep voices silent. They have rules that came out. Roles that discouraged the Radio Stations from editorializing. That is just around after world war ii and in the late 90 40s, out comesand explosive policy that will be mandated to carry issues of controversy, of ventures to the community in which they broadcast and to do so from a balanced perspective. Ok now, the question of what is a balanced perspective, what is a controversial issue that needs to be covered. I think the chapter title, orwells revenge. I mean, fairness doctrine, doesnt that that wouldsomething be political to define . Fastforward to the 1960s. There was a Nuclear Test Ban treaty. It was somewhat controversial. It passed the senate by a fairly healthy margin in 1960 two, but 1962 but there are a lot of conservative, very conservative radio commentators who are against it, and that was troubling to the Kennedy Johnson administration, and there was actually a Monitoring Program of these Radio Stations put together in washington to help provide it by the national committee. Complaints amending free and equal time. The people who ran his operation said explicitly afterwards that it was done to harass and intimidate the stations are actually espousing this point of view. Brian let me read what you wrote. As a commerce official said our massive strategy was we wanted to use the fairness doctrine to challenge and duress rightwing broadcasters in hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue. where did he say that . Tom in testimony, investigating after the fact. It comes from a wonderful 1975 book by fred friendly, former president of cbs news. The good guys, the bad guys, and the First Amendment. It does upset the apple cart in terms of your normal view of partisan politics, perhaps, and maybe then, maybe more now, but there are dirty hands all around the political spectrum. Conventionally defined, i am talking about. They use these rules to take out opinions on the other side. So this actually, the thing that is amazing about the fairness doctrine and this time is that there are actually becomes a case that goes to the Supreme Court. The redline case. Decided in 1969. It comes out with one of these challenges where a journalist on the left, fred cook, wrote a book, goldwater extremist on the right. Just after the election is over in november. He is attacked and criticized on a conservative Radio Station in pennsylvania by the reverend, and ultraconservative. The journalist demands free, equal time. The owner of the station says i will sell you the same 15 minutes the reverend used for 7. 50. That is what he paid. Cook says i want free equal time. That goes to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court finds 80, with Justice Douglas recused, saying the fairness doctrine is ok, and it is just part of this licensing. If you do not do it this way, you will have chaos in the spectrum. And yeah, the government could look at what the Public Interest is and how the content works in things like the fairness doctrine. That is editorially ok. If they could show there was any Chilling Effect on the editorial independence of the Radio Stations, in this case it was a Radio Station, same law for tv. If there is any editorial effect,nce of chilling ofn there would be a case Chilling Effect. It turned up a whole case was a Chilling Effect because it came out of this monitoring investigation. This came out of a political effort, a campaign, if you will. It was to harass and intimidate these small, lowbudget broadcasters that had seemingly extreme views and were on the opposite side of the fence. The Supreme Court just missed that. A ratherbecame sensational example of regulatory failure when it became exposed i fred friendlys book. Brian when did the fairness doctrine finish and stop . Tom there were a lot of controversies. In 1985, the federal Communications Commission, during the Ronald Reagan years, actually asked the court to overturn the fairness doctrine on First Amendment grounds. The court came back to the fcc and they basically said it is your regulation. If you do not like it, do not tell the court to overturn it. You just undo it. What happened in august in 1987 is the federal Communications Commission overturns the fairness doctrine. They withdraw it and there is a big negative reaction, the idea that that was going to cause problems with fairness. What it did do and what studies have found, and my report on one such study i wrote with a former student of mine, david sosa, published a few years back, did find there was an explosion in informational programming on am and fm radio. You have news, talk, newstalk, and Public Affairs format programming all through radio. A lot of people all the looked at that and say that they are conservatives and Rush Limbaugh and all this rise of conservative talk radio, and there is a link saying the deregulation allowed more vibrant opinions, so to speak. The conservatives in general were against eliminating the fairness doctrine. Newt gingrich, james falwell, ardent conservatives were opposed to that reagan era deregulation policy. They wanted to reinstitute the fairness doctrine. Host when there was a fairness doctrine, you and i had to walk somewhere and find the person responsible for dealing with a complaints. Where would he or she be . Tom at the media bureau of the federal Communications Commission brian how many people fussed over the fairness doctrine . Tom i was fussed over for decades. You know, i cannot give you the numbers brian small dozens . Tom i was there in 1991 and 1992 and the chairman of the commission was appointed by the chairman and george h. W. Bush. So, you know, the media bureau gets these complaints. The staff goes through them and obviously tries to formulate some kind of policy. Consistent over time. Again, it is not just the Democratic Left in the Kennedy Johnson<