How can citizenry be engaged across different platforms? Today, the Prospect considers public media 2.0 and asks experts about its future.
Ellen Goodman is a law professor at Rutgers University. She specializes in information technology, media, and intellectual property.
How do we nurture public media 2.0? Federal support for noncommercial public media needs to be better tailored to the capabilities and needs of digital networks.
Federal funding for public media needs to be unbundled from the aging broadcast infrastructure. The Public Broadcasting Act earmarks federal appropriations for broadcast stations -- about 70 percent -- to an extent that is out of proportion with the reduced importance of broadcasting in our communications environment and the increased importance of broadband and mobile.
Federal support also takes the form of spectrum allocations to full power noncommercial broadcast stations. There ought to be consolidation among noncommercial broadcast stations, especially in television, with some television stations sharing multicast digital channels. Economic pressures alone will effectuate some of this consolidation, but a policy piece is also necessary. There should be incentives for noncommercial stations to return licenses to the FCC; the value of these licenses ought to be returned to public media through grants and new investments.
Finally, federal support takes the form of copyright exemptions and licenses. These are designed for broadcasting, and not for broadband distribution, and need to be updated for the digital environment.
Related: Jessica Clark and Patricia Aufderheide offer their vision for building a new national network, and a group of media experts discuss the challenges faced by public media 2.0.
--Ellen Goodman
