Mention, because i will go anywhere and work with anyone to do whats right for alaskans. I served with dan sullivan in the United States marine corps. Dan sullivan was one of those leaders that led by example. Dan sullivan trained hundreds of alaskan marines to be ready for combat in cold weather conditions. Alaska needs a fighter. I see that in dan sullivan. This country let alone this state was built by people like dan sullivan. When times get tough he cant take no for an answer. He cares about fellow alaskans and fellow countryman. If dan says something hes going to do i believe him because i trust him. Im dan sullivan and i approve this message. What was mark begichs real record as mayor . Over 9,000 now jobs. He eliminated a 33 million deficit. And invested in police, firefighters, and schools. Then as senator he took on obama to fix alaskas v. A. Exempt our schools from no child left behind. And is taking responsibility for fixing the Health Care Law so it works for alaska. Im mark begich. And i approve this message because i will go anywhere, and work with anyone, to do whats right for alaskans. Recent polls list this race as a tossup. You can watch senator begich and mr. Sullivans recent debate any time online at cspan. Org. Next a look back at the Communications Act of 1934 which created the federal Communications Commission. We heard about the new deal thinking that wrote and passed the act and ideas for updating the act today to help reflect modern technology. This was held by the brookings institution. Its an hour and a half. Good afternoon, im stewart, nonresident senior fellow here at the brookings institution, and center for technology innovation. Its a pleasure to welcome everyone here. Were here for an unusual event. Were actually here for a birthday party. Its not often that people gather that places like brookings to celebrate a piece of legislation and more than celebrate, to take a pretty broad and deep look at where weve been and perhaps where we may be going with a piece of legislation known as the Communications Act of 1934. For those of you who do a little math, 1934, plus 80, equals 2014. So were talking about an 80yearold piece of legislation. Let me just do a few quick ground rules for our discussion today. First of all were not going to have any formal presentations. Were going to have a Good Spirited conversation, and then there will be ample time for q and a afterwards when we have q a, if everyone will just identify who you are, and if youre associated with an organization, that will be helpful. Well have people with microphones, as well, and if youll just wait until a microphone is at your side, it will be a lot easier. Many of you know that were live now on cspan3. And so, welcome to that audience, as well. In addition, because we are in the age of social media, we do have a hashtag, which is comm act, commact. And for those of you who are here or elsewhere tweeting this out would be great. For those of you who will not be tweeting it out, we would appreciate if you would silence or turn off your cell phones or other devices. So let me set the stage a little bit, and probably the easiest way is also to begin to introduce our very esteemed pant today. On my far right here is bob litan. Bob has a very long and distinguished history as an economist and lawyer here in washington, including a very long and distinguished history here in brookings, where he was Vice President and director of economic studies. Bob also has served in the Justice Department as Principle Deputy assistant attorney general in the antitrust division. And the office of just have seen the announcement, bob is the author of a terrific new book which is called trillion dollar economist, which is published by Bloomberg Press and is Available Online and presumably in book stores right now. Rob mcdowell in the middle has a long and distinguished history as well. Most recently, sevenyear service as commissioner and the senior commissioner of the federal Communications Commission. Rob is now a partner at wylie ryan, which is one of the great law firms in washington and particularly, one of the Great Communications law firms and a pleasure for rob to be here. Rob also has the distinction of having been nominated and confirmed on a bipartisan basis under two different president s, george w. Bush and barack obama. So i think he has a very interesting perspective, clearly as a republican appointee, but also with an appointment of the democratic president. And then larry irving. Larry was formerly under the Clinton Administration, the administrator of the National Telecommunications and information administration, my old agency. He also had many other titles that attached to that, including assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information. Larry also has an extensive portfolio on the hill. Prior to ntia, larry was the senior counsel at the house telecommunication and finance subcommittee. And so, with these three panelists and a little bit of myself, i think we span executive branch, legislative branch, we dont span the courts, obviously, and obviously, the fcc as well. Newton minnow was the chairman of the fcc for a relatively short period of time, 27 month, beginning the kennedy administration, but many things happen, including the first major amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, which we will talk a little bit about afterwards, which is the Communication Satellite act of 1962. Newt reminded me that even though today, we look at the Communications Act as a major piece of legislation thats attached to the new deal, at the time that it was formulated, it was really considered a minor piece of legislation and here is some of the major pieces of legislation that were being formulated at the same time. We had in 1934, we had the farm mortgage foreclosure act, the civil works emergency relief act, and the gold preserve act and of course the securities and exchange act. So as you know, new deal brought us out of the depression and really what was on americas mind at that point was how to revive the economy and communications was not really a central part of our economy at that point and so, it was an act, as we will talk about, that essentially was built upon the foundation of prior legislation, legislation that really started in the 1800s with the interstate commerce act in the late 1800s and then later on, an amendment to that called the mannelkins act in 1910. A little history, sounds quite ancient. Why dont we at least fast forward to 1934 and begin to talk a little bit about the original intent of the act. What was the act trying to do when it was formulated . I guess i will take a shot. Do you remember . Seems like yesterday. I was right there franklin and i no. It was a housekeeping act. You had telecommunication. Long and distinguished about these guys, not about me, a little bit [ inaudible ] Commerce Department and most folks dont realize that most of the work done at the Commerce Department, a small agency called the federal Radio Commission and what this act basically did was take some of the responsibility that was resided in the Commerce Department, some of the responsibility that resided in the federal Radio Commission and pull them together. One of the interesting things is that, there was an assumption, in the 30s, this was going to be a natural monopoly. We were dealing with a scarce resource, monopolistic resource and seen needed to be somebody to make sure the big players really didnt face competition played fair. That was really what it was about, take the radio industry was nascent. An interesting fact at one point, there was a conversation about taking 25 of the broadcast spectrum, on pbs, on board and look at this, broadcast spectrum was at one point earmarked for educational purposes, the commercial broadcasting industry fought that off, instead, got a Public Interest responsibility instead of having 25 go to nonprofit educational purposes. Nobody in 1934 looked at communication the way we look at it now and no thought it would be onesixth of our economy. I will take off on the word monopoly. Two words to keep in mind when you think about 1934, monopoly is one of them, actually, there were two monopolies, then, at t and then, well, when we talk about monopoly, monopoly implies scarcity, we had radio. Didnt have tv yet. I will get to that in a minute. We thought in terms of monopoly and scarcity, sort of, as i said, two parts of two sides of one coin and the other thing, of course, that was fundamental, 1934, is the word anna log, all right . And cause we want to set this up for how the world has changed since 1934. But if you think about the predicate of 1934 and what happened afterwards, we get to satellite,et, essentially, larrys right, that the federal Radio Commission became the fcc and then the fcc morphed into taking on more and more responsibility as we had other forms of communication. So, we got tv. We got satellites. We got mobile telephony. As each of the new technologies came along, the fcc, as i view it, developed departments for each one of them. And they were all separate silos. It was all useful to think of them as separate silos. A world of anna log, the waves oo world a world of analogue the waves sort of interchangeable. They are all sort of separate. It made sense to have separate things. I dont want to preempt the discussion, we will talk about what changed since then, you can see how different that world was then than it is now. And we will talk about whats changed since. So building on that, absolutely right. It was very, very different and back to a monopoly point. You did have the old at t agreeing to actually protection for its monopoly in exchange for what we call the universal service. That is to make Telephone Service available at reasonable rates upon request and also to build out, the telephone was still a relatively new technology and mainly the of a fluent and urban and suburban areas, not that there were any suburban areas then, mainly the main subscribers of that. So, how do you have that technology proliferate and there was some competition issues and excluding competitors and in exchange for being able to have a monopoly and not be subject to the trust busters, you can take shelter in being a regulated monopoly. That was part of the impetus and political compromise for the 1934 act and then theres what i think is sort of a fiction of spectrum scarcity, back then, only am radio, my father, who grew up in the tex mex border in delrio, texas, used to tell stories of just across the border in via kuhn ya, mexico, there was a 1 millionwatt radio station, again, all a. M. , dr. Brinkley, the notorious dr. Brinkley, his signal could reach over a huge swath of the u. S. And that was his audience, but there wasnt any regulation of that and the screen doors across the river in delrio, texas, would vibrate with the energy from that radio station. There were legitimate Spectrum Management issues, a question which we could develop into Going Forward, what was the role of the fcc Going Forward . Need an independent agency manage that or could that be managed by the executive branch for spectrum allocation, a topic to tee up. But those were a couple of the motivations behind the 1934 act and things have changed completely and those silos that you just pointed out still exist in terms of the regulatory landscape, but for technology in the market and especially, most importantly consumers, those silos dont exist and the law should be updated to reflect that. One thing about how much the world has changed. Franklin roosevelt suggested the federal Communications Commission in february, 1934. By june of 1934, it was out of both house and by july 11th, the act took effect completely across the nation. You cant get a hearing in six months now in washington. And they passed an entire bill, which gives you a sense of, one, relatively importance and two how much more gridlock there is today in washington than there is when they were looking at this legislation. And one party rule. One party rule. The democrats, miss those days. Also interesting about this mannelkins act in 1910, again, google it or look it up. The mannelkins act essentially gave for the first Time Authority of the interstate Commerce Commission to regulate telephony and telegraph and from 1910 until 1934, that authority was not at the federal Radio Commission, it was not part of the federal radio act, but telephony and telegraph were considered separate media which were regulated by an entirely differents, the icc, which essentially regulated rail carriage and rail transportation. And so, a lot of our notions of common carriage essentially were rooted in this notion of the icc and part of what the Communications Act of 1934 did was to bring together the notions of telephony and telegraph at that point and to marry them with notions of mass media, principally with radio. So, we essentially had two different acts which were combined, put together and we had the federal Radio Commission then morph into the federal Communications Commission and the fcc was then given the authority to regulate telephony as well as broadcast and spectrumrelated media. Part of it, looking back at the history, is that the icc had very little confidence and was quite frustrated because they wanted to really focus on the railroads and all of a sudden, they had cases dealing with telephony and telegraphs and the staff and the commissioners really felt uncomfortable. This was not their zone of expertise. And so, they were very supportive of taking that function and moving it out and thats essentially how those two functions got combined into these sigh these we are talking about in the Communications Act. One footnote. So the icc, just to tee up a later discussion, probably none of you people will remember, the icc is gone, okay . We are going to be talking about the future of the icc. It doesnt exist anymore, all right . And i worked on the Clinton Administration. And two cheers all in my book, by the way, trillion dollar economist, talked about what happened in the icc, how it grew up and then its demise and people dont realize that it was the Carter Administration that killed it. They all think that you know, Reagan Administration came on and killed off a lot of regulation, carter was responsible for Airline Deregulation and trucking deregulation and rail. Rail. And ray. Worked. It all worked, all right . And the icc in between the time right after time that they got ahold of telecommunications, along come trucks, you know, in the 1930s and they ended up with trucks. And, you know, in retrospect, shouldnt have had anything and we finally got rid of it all. So i mean, thats just that will sort of give you an indication where im going to be talking about, the future of the fcc later on they dont they think ld regulation worked, talk about that at another brookings event, airline regulation, not quite so much. More people can fly now. If you adjust for consumer price, Airline Deregulation has worked, i agree with you, a lot of airlines suck, but that is not because flying sucks, i just was on an airplane yesterday. I know this is going to be tweeted now. No but that line. A lot of people dont like airlines. And its important to talk about this, because people will say, oh, my god, if you do it for if you do this for communications, look what happened to airlines. I think a lot of what happened to the airlines since, first people misperceived, said rates havent come down, but the planes are all full because they are like buses, okay . But people dont remember the back in the old days, planes were 60 full, all right . And it was a tremendous economic waste. And it was a disaster, all right . And i think the Justice Department probably has allowed too many mergers, all right . And as a result, we have too much consolidation, but that is not deregulations fault. I just wanted to get that in. Remember, the name of the book is. Trillion dollar economist and read all about this in chapter nine and communications i think is in chapter 11. Shameless plug. Shameless plug. Ron mcdowell shows up at the fcc, having been confirmed and presumably has in his breast pocket a copy of the of the Communications Act and he sees in there tattooed. Sees the phrase public convenience, interest or necessity. Interestingly in the communication act itself, different formulation, sometimes done in a conjunctive Public Interest, convenience and necessity, sometimes in the alternative public convenience or necessity but most legislative historians say that that basically really didnt make much of a difference. The key interest here is Public Interest convenience and then the word necessity. When you came to the fcc and looked at those words and realized you and your fellow commissioners now had the authority to implement the act, what did that mean to you yeah, so and this is a point of philosophical debate, which is probably why youre asking the question. There are those who think because P