THE PUBLIC INTEREST, CONVENIENCE, OR NECESSITY: A DEAD STANDARD IN THE ERA OF BROADCAST DEREGULATION?

PACE LAW REVIEW

Vol. 10 No. 3 Page 661

Citation: 10 Pace L. Rev. 661 (1990)

Pace University School of Law

Summer, 1990

 by Marc Sophos

Copyright © 1990 by the Pace Law Review; Marc Sophos

This is a lengthy work on the subject of broadcast deregulation, its excesses, and its effects.  Although it was published in 1990, its relevance is even greater today than it was then: almost every week, one can read about new mega-mergers that create vast media conglomerates, resulting in an alarming degree of ownership concentration in the electronic mass media.

The article is available in pdf format.  You must have the free Adobe Reader software to open it.  Alternatively, you can read it in plain text.  The links are below.

To get a general sense of what the piece is about, expand the bookmarks in the document and read the Introduction and Conclusion first.

Comments from prominent individuals about this article:

Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York (11/7/90):

You point out well the great lengths to which Reagan Administration regulators have often gone to carry out their laissez-faire ideology, and the analytic contortions they have performed to get there.  To our great cost, the scandals over the savings and loan bailout and the Federal nuclear weapons plant cleanups remind us that reasonable regulation serves essential social purposes.  It protects society from the tremendous damage to our human, fiscal and environmental health that laissez-faire would otherwise impose on us.

Your work is a useful part of the antidote we need to the deregulatory excesses of the 1980s.

Ervin S. Duggan, FCC Commissioner (10/29/90):

Unfortunately, so much has happened to erode the public interest standard that its future is uncertain.  I intend, however, to do what I can to rehabilitate that standard in a form that makes sense in an environment of "light-handed" regulation.  As I contemplate how to do that, your article will be most helpful for its historical content and its strong statement of the rationale for the public-interest standard.

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• Article also available in plain text:

  • Section I - Introduction

  • Section II - History of Broadcast Regulation and Establishment of the Public Interest Standard

  • Section III - Deregulation of Broadcasting

  • Section IV - A New Development: Twenty-Four-Hour Satellite Radio Programming Services

  • Section V - Analysis

  • Section VI - Conclusion

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