SPEECH BY REED HUNDT
                                 CHAIRMAN
                     FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

                     THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
                        TELECOMMUNICATIONS SEMINAR
                             WASHINGTON, D.C.

                        (AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY)

                             OCTOBER 19, 1995


                           THE FCC OF THE FUTURE

     Thank you, Jill, for that kind introduction.  On behalf of the Commission, I thank
you for caring so much about the issues that we work on.

     We at the FCC are very flattered that you have convened this forum to analyze and
critique the role of the Federal Communications Commission.  I hope you will be gimlet-
eyed as you direct your gaze at us.  The FCC, an erstwhile sleepy little agency, has never
had more importance that it does now.  We need all the help we can get in doing our job
right.  

     Our twin mission should be to promote private competition, and to state with
specificity the public interest in the communications revolution.  

     We need the resources to accomplish these objectives.  

     President Bush's chairman, Al Sikes and President Clinton's first chairman, Jim
Quello, all agreed that the agency was seriously underfunded and underequipped.  Al Sikes,
at least, was able to get touchtone phones.  Jim Quello obtained some money to implement
the 1992 Cable Act -- but by the time Congress gave him the money the initial due dates for
implementing the act in 1993 had already passed.

     After I took office in November 1993, we were successful at last in lifting the
agency's funding to $186 million -- a pittance compared to the $300 billion segment of the
economy for which we implement public policy.

     This funding permitted us to bring computers and networks into the FCC. 

     We're moving to electronic filing.  We receive 14,500 hits a day on the Internet.  We
talk to each other and to the public on E-Mail.

     Other big changes were the creation of the International Bureau, the Wireless Bureau,
the Cable Bureau, the Office of Communications Business Opportunities, the Office of
Workplace Diversity, and the Competition Division.  These new units concentrated
previously scattered functions.  Our organization -- like all organizations -- benefits by
decentralizing and re-focusing.

     We have also cut back in other areas.  Our field offices consume about one-seventh of
our budget.  The employees are able and loyal public servants.  But where modern
communications technology permits us to close offices and downsize, we have to do it.  The
FCC can't be preaching the benefits of technological change and refusing to change
ourselves.

     But the biggest change we must accomplish lies in reforming the way we gather
evidence, think through problems, and make decisions.  In this effort, no one commissioner
is more important than any other.  

     There are seven keys to improving the quality of our methods and our decisions.

     First, time to debate is good for us.  We do better if each FCC Commissioner and
their staffs have time to devote serious scrutiny of issues that come before us.  To guarantee
sufficient time, summaries of comments on notices are given to commissioners two weeks
after the comments are filed.  In advance of getting a written draft item of decision for
consideration, Commissioners get detailed briefings by the Bureaus on the items.  Then at
least three weeks before decision at open meetings, the written draft is circulated.  That gives
each commissioner two weeks to hear from advocates and one last week to come to decision. 


     For decisions on circulation we have all committed to a process that guarantees
speedy but well-deliberated decisions.  As a result, the circulate backlog has been eliminated. 


     Second, mutual accommodation is good for us.  As to notices, any Commissioner
who wants any line of inquiry of questioning to be developed in a Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking should be accommodated.  As to orders, all commissioners should aspire to
reach a unanimous consensus verdict.  To try to get there we should engage in vigorous,
fact-based, legally sound debate.  Changing the Sunshine Act to permit private meetings on
items would help.  In the absence of such a change, we should find the time to debate with
each other one-on-one and through our staffs.  Almost always, when we have a full
exploration of views, we will find ways to come to consensus.

     Proof of our ability to agree lies in this statistic:  720 of the Commission's decisions -
- of a total of 734 over the last two years -- were unanimous.  

     Third, judicial review is good for us.  We must study the facts, read the law, and
think about the economics of the complicated issues that come before us.  In fact, we are
very proud that in the last two years there has been an increase in appeals won by the FCC
from 60% to 80%.  This is due in no small part to the outstanding work of Bill Kennard, our
General Counsel, his able deputies Chris Wright and David Solomon, and his talented team. 
But, it is also due to the respect the Commissioners have accorded to the legal guidance of
his office.

     We Commissioners are trying to be much more like judges than like extensions of a
legislature.

     Fourth, my fellow Commissioners and I should be privately cooperative with each
other.   However, in public, open debate, we should not be shy about disagreeing with each
other.   We show ourselves to best advantage when we engage in mutually respectful,
spirited, honest, fact-based, public debate.  Open, civil expression of competing views by
Commissioners is productive.

     When I arrived at the FCC, I found in some quarters the view that Commissioners
should aspire to be in public agreement, even while privately quarrelling.  That is exactly the
opposite of how judges and healthy organizations behave.

     Fifth, critical comment on the substance of our decisions is good for us.   FCC
decisions should be analyzed on the substance of the issues.  We are not supposed to be
reported on as if we were a soap opera, where nothing is principled and everything is
personal.  The substance of the decisions we make ought to be the focus of the press and
expert criticism --  or even, occasionally, approval.  

     Sixth, at the FCC we need to stick, like the shoemaker, to our last.  Specifically, we
should make decisions in a timely manner.  We should pay little attention to which way the
political winds are blowing or who will salute or slam our decisions.  

     The Chairman sets the agenda.  But there is a tradition at the FCC that one
Commissioner can pull an item off the agenda, but that as to a single item this can be done
by the Commissioners only one time.  I don't mind this tradition, but delay of more than one
month on important items puts us in a very bad light.  

     Seventh, we Commissioners ought to enjoy our jobs.  They're the best jobs in town
you don't have to get elected to.  This is the best of times the best of jobs.  I've had lunch
with Miss America and dinner with Steve Bochco.  We have a chance every day to try to do
something good for the best country in the world.  It's an honor and a joy to be a
Commissioner.

     These seven keys to successful decisions will give us good results with respect to
what may be the most important part of the public that our public interest function can serve: 
the 60 million children in this country.  

     When our children go to school, they should enter a world of information and wonder
accessible through modern communications technology.  We've got to find ways to link
every child to the information superhighway.  It's the on-ramp to the future.  As the
President has said, "We must make technological literacy a standard."

     The FCC has the duty and opportunity to craft policies that will give all children the
opportunity to explore the communications revolution everyday in every classroom in every
school in the country.

     In addition, a reasonable amount of educational television ought to be something that
every parent and every child can get free over the air every day.  Figuring out how to apply
the Children's TV Act to achieve its purposes is a key part of the more general problem of
giving real meaning to the public interest standard.  All users of the airwaves are trustees of
the public property of the airwaves.  For some, like the winners of the PCS auction, the
FCC has in effect held that using the public's airwaves to compete in commercial sectors is
sufficient to serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity.  For others -- especially
broadcast TV licensees -- the FCC has routinely held that something beyond commercial
competition is necessary to serve the public interest.  

     My friend, past colleague, and former FCC chairman, Mark Fowler wanted a rule of
law that held broadcasters to no public interest standard other than competition in the
marketplace, and that gave them no special privileges.  

     But the statutory law and the case law do not in any way support the equation of the
public interest standard with marketplace competition.  The law is that the pure market-based
pursuit of profits is not sufficient for broadcasters to prove that they are entitled to be the
stewards of the public trust.  If a broadcaster does no more than what commercial
competition compels, it does not necessarily get to keep its license.

     Mark Fowler's approach is an option -- but it's not the law as written, and it certainly
is the approach rejected by an overwhelming number of Americans, including most
broadcasters themselves.  

     Another approach is, in effect, what we are debating in the re-write of the children's
TV rules.  How can we have a public interest standard without stating clear, specific,
concrete rules?  Isn't it completely contrary to First Amendment values for the FCC not to
tell broadcasters, in the plainest possible terms, what is expected of them in return for their
free use of the airwaves?

     The Children's TV Act rulemaking is not only a test of this broader effort to
articulate the public interest standard; it is hugely important in itself.  In that proceeding we
have already received some 1,500 comments.  It's wonderful how the country is speaking to
us.  

     A parent writes from Bowling Green, Ohio:

     ". . . I would like to see children's television programming include far fewer acts of
violence, especially violence as a means to solve one's problems often shown in cartoon
programming.  There should be a minimum of at least one hour of 'core' educational
programming daily . . ."

     From a college television and broadcasting student in New York:

     "Knowing that television is filled with violence, obscene language, and sexual
content, none of which should be viewed by young children, we...should make it our
responsibility to give the younger generation a positive and enjoyable outlet, such as
educational children's programming."

     And from a young student in Washington, D.C.:

     "What's bad about T.V. is the violence and the cursing.  What's good about
television is that they have some educational programs like Bill Nye, the Science Guy."

     I think we would all recognize "Bill Nye the Science Guy" as an educational show.  

     But Dale Kunkel, a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says
that the current FCC definition of educational programming apparently encourages
broadcasters to file public records making claims that they satisfy the Act with shows such as
"Biker Mice from Mars," "America's Funniest Home Videos," and "Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers".

     And NBC claimed in its filing with the FCC this past Monday that in January 1995,
its network added another half-hour of educational/informational programming to its schedule
with "NBA Inside Stuff."  NBC claims educators support the characterization of this show as
primarily educational.  

     Let's not trivialize this debate by focusing on the educational properties, or lack
thereof, of a show about basketball.

     Let's get to the core questions.

     Here's what I'd like to hear from broadcasters, and especially the hugely affluent
networks.  Do they support a tighter, more realistic definition of educational TV?  Using a
meaningful definition, Americans believe most broadcasters and networks have aired less
than three hours a week of educational TV almost every week since the Children's TV Act
was passed.  Using a meaningful definition (instead of the vague, overly broad definition the
FCC issued in 1991), is that assumption right or wrong?  Using a meaningful definition,
which networks have delivered as much as three hours of truly educational TV in any season
since the Act was passed?   

     Would broadcasters support  funding a social science institute, center, or university
with academic freedom that would test and report on the educational value of all the
networks' shows submitted in purported compliance with the Children's TV Act?  Not just
"Inside NBA Stuff," but all the networks' educational shows would be tested.  Would
networks agree to have the public evaluation of such an institute guide their own
development of educational TV?  Isn't this a workable, First Amendment-friendly way for
broadcasters to meet their duties under the law to help educate our kids?

     And what plan, other than a guaranteed minimum, do networks and broadcasters
propose?

     Overwhelmingly, the commenters representing the public have supported rules that
place minimum duties on all broadcasters to deliver educational TV free over the air.  It's
great for the Commission's processes that we have comments from such groups as the
Parents and Teachers Association, the Children's Defense Fund, the Black Community
Crusade for Children, the U.S. Catholic Conference, the Consumer Federation of America,
the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Education Association, the American
Psychiatric Association, and many others.  The number of Americans represented by the
groups advocating minimum duties for broadcasters is 59 million.

     On the other hand, three who disagree are the historic Big Three Networks: NBC,
ABC, and CBS.  (Interestingly, Fox and Paramount did not file.)  The former Big Three
recommended in their filings that instead of requiring broadcasters to air a set number of
hours per week of educational programs, we should continue to study, as ABC put it, "the
children's programming marketplace."  We asked the networks to do their studies three year
ago when we started the Notice of Inquiry.

     The comment filing date of October 16 was the time to stand and deliver.  It was the
date of a test of conscience.  

     And on that date the networks said they needed more time to study.  

     Three more years to study.  At least they didn't say the dog ate their homework!

     It is ironic that the networks are suggesting more study.  When the Administration
suggested this summer that the Commission study the prime time access rule for an
additional period, the three networks said that "more years of regulatory gridlock on PTAR
exemplifies the workings of government at its very worst."

     Apparently, they think regulatory gridlock on the rewrite of the educational TV rules
would be government at its best.

     In any event, we rejected the calls for delay, and eliminated PTAR.  As a result we
greatly increased the worth of the former Big Three networks.

     Now we need to go ahead and decide how to rewrite the failed Children's TV rules. 
This is important for us as an organization, for the great communications businesses of
America, and for all the kids of this country.  We appreciate your help in making sure we
read the law, look at the economics, and do the right things on this and all matters.

                                   -FCC-