REMARKS BY COMMISSIONER JAMES H. QUELLO
                                Before the
                   NAB's Children's Television Symposium
                         ANA Hotel, Washington, DC
                            September 21, 1995

                              ENOUGH ALREADY!

     Congratulations to the NAB for conducting this Children's Television
Symposium.  The awards today provide timely evidence of the high standards that
children's programming can meet.  This Symposium is particularly pertinent because
broadcasters have a continuing need to better inform the public and government
officials of the many educational and informational programs available to both
children and adults.

     There are four key points I want to make to you today about television and the
child audience.  First, despite contrary views including the views of President Clinton
which I respect, an objective review of the complete record will indicate that
broadcasters are already doing an extensive job of airing educational and
informational programming for children.  I do not feel it is necessary to saddle
broadcasters with federally imposed standards pertaining to the quantity of children's
programming.

     Second, I do not think that quantitative children's programming requirements
have any chance of being upheld in the federal courts.

     Third, any possible argument that could be made in favor of governmental
content regulation of broadcasting has been eliminated in recent years by the
development of an incredibly diverse, multichannel, multimedia video marketplace.  

     Fourth, this incredible programming diversity comes with an inevitability that
children will be exposed to increased levels of sex and violence.  It is this aspect of
television and the child audience that should be our primary concern.  

     Now, let me develop each of these points.

     I believe a current objective review would reveal that broadcasters have
responded to the Children's Television Act of 1990 through increased programming. 
A study done by NAB last year found that there was an 81% increase in educational
programming for children from 1990 to 1993.  The study reflected that, in 1993, on
average, broadcasters aired 3-1/2 hours per week of educational children's
programming.  Preliminary results from an even more recent study by NAB indicate
that the increase in educational programming was even higher in 1994.  This
programming includes, for example, ABC's After School Specials, which have been
aired now for 24 seasons.   Also, there are many general audience programs that
provide educational benefits for children.  They should not be disregarded just
because they are not specifically developed for children.  

     In my opinion, any governmentally-imposed quantitative program requirements
would constitute unnecessary, objectionable government intrusion and would never
pass a First Amendment court challenge.  Broadcasters need to better inform the
public of the many children's educational and informational programs available today. 


     Specifically, I must respectfully register a dissent to some critical statements
made by the FCC Chairman in a recent speech.  He had a perfect right to express
them and I have a perfect right to express opposing opinions.  

     So now it is my turn.

     The Chairman's speech, titled "Long Live Frieda Hennock," extolled the
regulatory viewpoint of a former FCC Commissioner named Frieda Hennock, who
served on the FCC almost fifty years ago.

     The Chairman's "Frieda Hennock" speech was exceptionally well-structured. 
The content, however, reminded me of the ancient story of the cow who gives superb
rich milk, then kicks over the bucket and spills the milk.  And this spill was big time! 

     The rich milk:  The Chairman's strong, eloquent criticism of excessive violence
and explicit sex available to children.  I agree, and have been making similar strong
statements and issuing stern warnings to broadcasters, cable and Hollywood
producers for the past five years.  In this connection, I also believe that parents are
much more concerned with excessive TV violence and sex than the generalized,
subjective, hard to substantiate need for more educational and informational
programming for children.

     I also give a 5-star approval rating to the Chairman's proposal to eventually
link classrooms to the information highway by combining computer technology with
wired and wireless transmission facilities, including TV, to produce a national "in-
school viewing" capability -- whenever this becomes technologically and economically
practicable.   This link must be accomplished without placing an undue financial burden on any one segment of an industry that
could result in higher costs to the consumer.

     The kicked bucket:  The Chairman's overbroad, almost unbelievable,
castigation, first, of broadcasters for disregarding the public interest; and, second, of
past commissions for a "long and undistinguished history of failing to apply
responsibly [their] mandate to make sure broadcasters use the airwaves to serve the
public and specifically to guarantee that television helps educate our children."

     His intemperate statement doesn't just demean all previous Commissions and
Commissioners, who he has on several occasions disparagingly referred to as "the
old regime."  It also suggests that the Chairman is casting himself as the sole public
interest white knight in shining armor and the prime crusader for more FCC control
and additional regulatory mandates -- like in the good ol' activist regulatory days of
the 1950s and '60s.  Is this the "new regime?" 


     The spilt milk:  Advocating the outdated regulatory mandates of the Frieda
Hennock era.  

     The Chairman has embarked on an unprecedented, unrelenting public relations
campaign to urge support for his specific quantitative program requirements -- which
are constitutionally suspect.  A Democratic Congress, in the Children's TV Act, did
not take that risk and did not enact quantitative standards.

     I also endorse Commissioner Hennock -- to a point -- for her support of
educational TV and UHF -- two worthy projects I have strongly supported during my
own FCC tenure.

     Because of my age, I am the only present Commissioner who actually knew
Frieda Hennock.  So,  I am tempted to say (1) I knew Frieda Hennock; (2)  I worked
with Frieda Hennock; (3) Frieda Hennock was a friend of mine; and (4) Reed, you are
no Frieda Hennock!  And in some respects that's fortunate for you.  Because, if you
were a Frieda Hennock regulator in the competitive multi-channel world of today, you
would be hopelessly outdated, beat up by Congress and overruled in the courts.

     Frieda Hennock was an effective, brilliant maverick several generations ago in
an era when broadcast television was the only show in town, and a very limited
number of television stations were the only source of video programs.  Today, there
is a superabundance of program choices -- over 1500 full power television stations,
including 4 networks, 2 additional emerging networks, 363 noncommercial
educational stations,  and more than 1600 low power stations.

     Nor is broadcast television even the dominant player in the video marketplace
any more.  Today, cable television reaches 97 percent of all television homes and 63
percent of households subscribe.  Cable's 135 program networks, with 60 more in the
planning stages, have brought an undreamed-of diversity of programming that
responds to virtually every conceivable want and wish.  DBS, MMDS, and, soon,
video dialtone systems will  augment and extend this array of programming.  Also
vying for the hearts and minds and eyes of the viewer are the Internet and VCRs,
which are now in 82 percent of all homes.

     With this incredible menu of program choices, the main legislative and
regulatory thrust today must be toward competition and deregulation -- not program
regulation and First Amendment intrusion.  In fact, we are fast approaching the
millennium when competition will replace the need for regulation -- a long-term goal
sought by both Congress and the FCC.

     However, deregulation doesn't seem to be what the Chairman has in mind.  He
recently equated the public interest with, and I quote, "specific, concrete, and
meaningful duties" imposed on broadcasters.  These are, of course, code words for
quantitative programming requirements.  If this is the deregulatory "new regime" at
work, thank God for Congress, the federal courts of appeal and the Supreme Court!


     The Chairman's claim of a "marketplace failure" in children's programming is a
farcical notion in today's multichannel, multi-faceted era and represents only the
viewer's failure to locate the desired programs.  The public has many diverse sources
of programming, including children's programming, to choose from.  That fact has
produced decisions like Syracuse Peace Council v. FCC, in which the court upheld
the FCC's determination that the Fairness Doctrine no longer serves the public
interest.

     It is increasingly more difficult, both logically and legally, to justify legislation or
additional regulation imposing program restrictions or quantitative children's
educational requirements on broadcasters when a great and ever-increasing variety
of program choices are available to the public for just a twist of the dial or the
insertion of a VCR tape.

     I also object to the Chairman's repeated diatribe that the Commission has not
done its job because it has not revoked a single TV license in 15 years.  This sounds
to me like a thinly-veiled threat.  Why does the Chairman find it necessary to threaten
the ultimate sanction of revocation when so many other regulatory tools lie close to
hand?  In any event, in the final analysis, the Chairman is only one vote among five
for the ultimate sanction.

     I take little pride in the fact that I'm the only Commissioner who has voted for a
substantial number of license revocations, mostly radio, during my tenure.  I believe
the license revocation power granted years ago during the "scarcity" era should be
revisited in the competitive multi-media, multi-channel world of today.  In fact, I
question whether any government agency should have the power to revoke the
license of a member of the most influential news medium in a democracy.  In the few
instances of proven egregious violations, distress sales to minorities should be
considered instead of the industry "death sentence" of total revocation.

     I must also take particular exception to the following statement in the
Chairman's "Frieda Hennock" speech that ". . . it's time to abandon the fiction that
asking broadcasters to do better on a volunteer basis has any chance of producing
desired results."  Sorry, but it is a somewhat fatuous statement.

     Some of the most respected, responsible companies in America are broadcast
licensees.  I can't believe the following licensees, and hundreds like them, just can't
be trusted to serve the public interest without Big Brother's  program mandates and
license renewal threats:

     The New York Times
     The Washington Post
     The Chicago Tribune
     The New York Daily News
     The San Francisco Examiner
     The Des Moines Register
     The Boston Globe
     The Atlanta Journal & Constitution
     The Detroit News-Free Press
     The Dallas Morning News
     USA Today - Gannett
     The Kansas City Star
     The Oakland Press
     The Miami Herald
     The St. Louis Post Dispatch
     And hundreds of other newspapers and all the broadcast networks
     
     Need I go on? 

     Broadcasters serve the public interest every day in ways in which no other
medium or business does.  They provide news, information, emergency bulletins,
documentaries and public service announcements, entertainment, and education -- all
free of charge.  No other medium can make that claim, and this tradition of free
service is, in itself, an important, underestimated contribution to the public interest.  In
fact, broadcasters contribute millions of dollars worth of public service programs and
announcements every single month.  From my experience in broadcasting, I can tell
you that the great majority of broadcasters make a commitment to community service
over and above what the Communications Act requires because it is good citizenship
and because it is good business  -- not because of the FCC.  And certainly not
because broadcasting, the prime information medium, has a government mandate to
make a "social contract" with their communities, outlining how many hours and what
types of public interest programming they must air.

     The simple fact is, broadcasters enter into a "social contract" with their
communities every day when they turn on their transmitters, and the public votes its
approval or disapproval daily through audience ratings. I hate to think how any
government-mandated "voluntary" social contract is likely to fare under First
Amendment scrutiny.

     I reject the notion that it serves the public interest to use this Commission's
authority to approve license transfers or assignments as a form of administrative
extortion to extract supposedly "voluntary" commitments on programming from
broadcasters as a quid pro quo for our approval.  Those who wish to pursue such an
unprecedented -- and unwise -- course should bear in mind that the entire
Commission -- not just one Chairman or Commissioner -- will review and vote on all
the terms of any license transfer or assignment.

     I could not talk about so-called "voluntary" social contracts involving children's
programming without commenting on the recent, very troubling, announcement, that
Westinghouse has let the first domino fall in what promises to be a long row of falling
dominos.  The Center for Media Education, and apparently the Chairman of the FCC
either directly or indirectly, have successfully extracted from Westinghouse a promise
to increase their level of children's programming within two years to three hours per
week.  Westinghouse's public claims that this plan is "voluntary" does not change my
bottom line position on this issue.  Let me be very clear on this point:  So long as the
United States has attached to its Constitution a Bill of Rights, this Commissioner will
consider long and hard before approving any transaction that includes an agreement
that effectively functions to censor a broadcast licensee's programming.  Any such
agreement, particularly extracted after significant pressure has been exerted by the
head of a governmental agency through speeches and meetings, and in the context
of a petition to deny from a public interest group that could have delayed the sale of
the station, is an affront to the First Amendment and is unlikely to withstand court
challenge.  Broadcasters beware:  If you choose to sell out the First Amendment, you
will have to do so without the support of this Commissioner.

     So, how is it possible to demand more from broadcasters at a time when the
government's rationale for making such demands is diminishing?  The answer, at
least for some, is to invent new justifications.


     For example, we are told by some that broadcasters are given their spectrum
for free, and that they must give something back for the "privilege" of engaging in
broadcast speech.  According to this argument, the ability to use a valuable public
resource must be accompanied by an obligation to speak in ways that the
government approves.  Some have suggested that broadcasters must base their
programming decisions on a government mandated  quid pro quo because they are
licensed by the government.  In fact, we now have activist groups again trying to
impose their own private version of the overall public interest on broadcasters through
petitions to deny, just as they did in the 1960s and 1970s.  This was encouraged, no
doubt, by the "new regime's" interpretation of deregulation.

     This "free" argument suffers from a number of problems, not the least of which
is that it is factually wrong.  The vast majority of broadcasters -- over 90% -- already
paid a full marketplace price when they purchased their stations.


     The only "free" TV licenses -- if you can call them that -- were the original
ones granted in 1949 and 1950 to a few entrepreneurs willing to take the expensive
initial risk of developing a new video medium before TV sets were generally available
in homes.  The new licensees invested in buildings, equipment, personnel and TV
programming without any initial source of advertising revenue.  In fact, TV was an
unprofitable exploratory investment for a number of years.

     But beyond the factual problem, the argument lacks substance.  There are
many instances in which the government allows its resources to be used by
speakers, but this does not allow it to control the content of the speech.

     Local governments issue parade permits, but that does not give them the
power to say who may or may not march in the parade.  The Supreme Court recently
affirmed that such decisions are the private editorial judgments of the parade
organizers, not the government.  Additionally, local governments issue cable
television franchises, but they have no power to dictate the program content of the
channels on the system.

     Another argument being floated as a justification for an expanded government
regulatory role in television is the one I alluded to earlier -- the notion of "marketplace
failure."  We are being told, for example, that the government must mandate specific
amounts of children's programming because the market has failed -- that an
insufficient amount of educational programming is being produced for the audience.

     Apart from begging the question of whether the government should be involved
in these marketplace decisions, this argument employs a rather strange notion of
"failure."  For in the television marketplace, people are willing to pay to receive the
Learning Channel, Discovery, Nickelodeon, Arts and Entertainment, the Disney
Channel and other cable channels.  Children's Television Workshop similarly has
announced plans to form a new cable channel.  The 363 noncommercial educational
broadcasting stations provide excellent children's programming and other general
educational programming. Let's not forget that probably hundreds of educational and
informational children's programs are available on VCR tapes, which are a particular
favorite of children because they can be played over and over.  Finally, and perhaps
most important, over a thousand commercial television stations and over 1600 low
power stations are now available to meet specific local educational and informational
needs.  

     This is not marketplace failure:  it is the market at work.  If consumers have
the ability to access a great variety of programming sources but choose not to, this is
consumer failure, not market failure.  Parents need to motivate their children to watch
the educational programs that are already available.

     Let me emphasize a point I made earlier.   Broadcasters don't need another
layer of government oversight in this competitive multi-channel program era.  And the
Commission doesn't need another opportunity to lose in court -- no matter how good
our lawyers are.

     But there is a larger problem that the debate over educational and
informational programming for children misses -- namely, the adult-oriented violence
and sexual content that pervades many prime-time television shows.

     The newly proposed V-chip would give parents the power to prevent the
viewing of objectionable programming.  Although they have always possessed the
ultimate power -- to merely tune out undesirable programs -- this requires "hands-on"
supervision of each show a child watches, something that many parents find
impracticable.

     I believe the V-Chip is probably the least intrusive means of empowering
parents to protect children so long as the government does not dictate the ratings
systems.  The V-chip lessens the need for legislation like the Hollings bill, which
would require the FCC to define and regulate violent programming.  But, I had
warned broadcasters, cablecasters, and Hollywood producers of the possibility of
Congressional action to curb graphic TV violence and explicit sex available to
children in 1993, 1994 and again this year.  If the Hollings bill passes, I can only say
"I told you so." 

     With the V-chip, increased parental supervision, and existing indecency
regulations, children can be protected from excessive violence and sex -- the prime
public concern.  And let's not forget the Commission's rule that requires all
broadcasters to maintain an "issues-programs" list that is open to public and FCC
inspection.  These lists must show that the broadcaster has presented programming
responsive to the needs and interests of the local community, including the
educational and informational needs of the child audience.  So, as to any additional
regulation, I say "ENOUGH ALREADY!"

     In the multichannel world of today with cable, DBS, movies, video dialtone,
Internet, VCRs, along with magazines and newspapers, it is disingenuous to center
primary blame for society's ills on broadcasting.  Also, there are other more important
influences to consider besides the media  -- like parents, relatives, home
environment, friends, teachers and schools.

     Thus, government regulators must resist the temptation, in a multi-channel
universe, to single out broadcast licensees as the primary source of all the ills of
society.  Then too, regulators must be careful not to lose the trust or respect of
regulated industries in over-zealous attempts to direct the programming choices of
licensees, threaten license revocation or to extract social engineering concessions in
the name of serving the public interest.

     Broadcasting today, as the most influential and pervasive of all news media,
merits full First Amendment rights.
 
     Now, let me briefly switch gears.  Beyond the current debate over
requirements for children's programming, I'm delighted today to have an opportunity
to present my views on several other contentious issues before this prestigious
forum.  In fact, I have been asked to broaden my comments to include auctioning of
digital ATV spectrum and multiple ownership.

HDTV and Digital Compression:  Broadcasters have worked for over seven years to
develop HDTV and digital compression.  I have stated that the first priority for this
new improved technology must be to improve and expand universal free TV.  I
applaud former Senate Communications Committee Chairman Fritz Hollings and
House Commerce Committee Chairman Jack Fields for their foresight in preserving
HDTV and broadcast digital spectrum for free TV.

Multiple Ownership Rules:  It is past time for relaxation of multiple ownership rules
and for expanding national caps.  However, I believe that there should be sensible
local caps to prevent local market domination and to obviate antitrust problems.

New Satellite DAB Service:  Although the issue is still open for comment and I
therefore have not finally made up my mind on this issue, I do believe at this time
that satellite DAB should be authorized as a subscription service.  I also believe we
must give in-band, on-channel DAB a chance to develop to provide terrestrial
broadcasters with the ability to compete with digital satellite services.

Minority Ownership and Employment:  I support EEO reform, particularly for small
stations.  However, I am a firm believer in tax certificates as the most direct way to
increase  minority ownership.

Congressional budget reductions:  I support the Chairman's efforts opposing the
untimely drastic cut in FCC funding and personnel.  This comes at a time when the
agency will probably be required to implement massive resource-intensive
communications legislation.  It seems to me that the size of the reduction should
await the outcome of the legislation.  Then too, the FCC is experiencing an
unprecedented burgeoning in new, innovative communications technology requiring
Commission action.  In fact, I disapprove of our proposed reductions in our field office
staff because I choose to wait and see what Congress does and because I believe
other parts of the Commission would more appropriately bear the brunt of any
required cuts.  And at the very least, current field office employees should have the
first opportunity to relocate to Washington if legislation causes a shift in FCC
regulatory priorities.

     Separate and apart from my views on regulating children's television or
anything else, let me give you my views on the most constructive approach to
regulation in general.
 
     Overall, I believe government regulation is best conducted in a spirit of mutual
cooperation with regulated industries -- broadcasting, cable, telephone, wireless,
DBS, etc.  If some choose to label this an "old regime" approach, so be it.

     I believe progress can best be achieved with a constructive government
attitude that provides incentives for innovation, growth and improvement in service
and products for the public.  We should reserve adversary proceedings for egregious
violations.  In return, we should expect that telecommunications companies, because
of their great impact on the American way of life, maintain a strong sense of social
consciousness.
 
     The great majority of American telecommunications and broadcasting
corporations have reasonably fulfilled most expectations by providing the American
people with the largest communications services in the world and their employees
with a good standard of living.  One of our highest government priorities must be to
preserve America's markets and our preeminent position in world communications to
assure healthy, progressive industries with gainfully employed Americans.

     Broadcast executives, many of them concerned parents, in general make a
much larger contribution to their communities, to advance technology and to the
overall public good than their detractors.  Do broadcasters make mistakes?  Yes, like
all human beings, even Commissioners -- and even Chairmen.

     Government officials must remind themselves that it was private investment,
not government funds or regulation that years ago received empty spectrum out of
the air and built the most comprehensive, diversified, technologically advanced, and
best free broadcasting system in the world.

                                   ###