REMARKS OF COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
TO
COMMONWEALTH NORTH POLICY GROUP
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
JULY 24, 2002


      Thank you for the great turn-out this morning!  Let me first thank you for the 
tremendous hospitality you are showing up during this visit to Alaska. Where I lived 
down South, we talked a lot about southern hospitality, but we don’t have anything on 
you in that regard, so I appreciate this outpouring of Alaska hospitality.  I am so pleased 
to be back.  I had the opportunity to visit here before when I was Assistant Secretary of 
Commerce working on promoting U.S. exports and I had the chance to meet with some 
of you then and to visit several of your companies.  I remember a very pleasant evening 
at the home of the University of Alaska Anchorage Chancellor Lee Gorsuch, and I recall 
with genuine pleasure an evening’s conversation with Alaska’s great Walter Hickel, from 
whom I learned so much about this wonderful state.   So I’m glad to see some old friends 
and also glad for the chance to hopefully make some new ones.
      
      My colleague, Commissioner Kevin Martin, asked that I express his regrets 
because he could not be here this morning due to one of those last-minute command 
performance meetings we all sometimes get involved in.  That forced him to delay his 
trip by one day, but he is due in later this afternoon and I look forward to our joint 
hearing and other activities this week.  I must note, however, that Kevin’s absence gives 
me a few extra moments to speak, so while I regret his absence, I am not completely 
crestfallen.
      
      I had the chance last week-end to read an excellent book called Airwaves Over 
Alaska which, as I’m sure most of you know, is a biography of the great Augie Heibert, 
the pioneering Alaska broadcaster.  Indeed, it seems like he was “present at the creation” 
of so much of Alaska’s broadcast development.  One thing that struck me was the central 
importance of communications to the good people of this state.  The book’s introduction 
puts it well.  It says: “Communication has had an impact on Alaska history second to no 
other development.  The broadcast media, as an integral component of communication in 
Alaska, has furnished Alaskans not only with quality entertainment, but enhanced the 
range of our educational, medical, marketing, and political capabilities.”  
      
      It was half a century ago that television first changed the lives of the people of 
this great state.  Today, other “new technologies” also have the potential to bridge the 
geographic distances in this state and other rural areas of the United States, and I am 
committed to working with all of you to help bring these new technologies to every 
person across Alaska and across this country of ours.  
      
      I just wrapped up my first year at the Commission last month, and what a year it 
was. It started with the economy performing sub-par, and the wholesale demolition of the 
dot.coms and many of the competitive phone companies.  And then came September 11 
and the fundamental reorientation of U.S. Government policies, agency priorities and 
your and my personal and family lifestyles.  Finally, in the last few weeks we have 
witnessed another round of unprecedented economic distress in the broader 
communications industries, including the possibility of service cut backs in certain 
critical services.  It was not a year any of us would like to relive. 
      
      Let’s begin with the biggest event – September 11.  The horrific events of that day 
added a whole new dimension to everything we were doing.  Suddenly, not only were we 
dealing with the problems of a depressed advertising market, a burst internet bubble, and 
the demise of many telecom companies that had seemed like the worst possible crises 
themselves only months ago – but we faced a huge and totally unprecedented threat to 
our country’s very safety and security. 
      
      A major unfinished task before the Commission this year is to strengthen 
homeland security in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11 and in preparation 
for what is likely more to come.  Before I go any farther, I want to say to all of you what I 
have already said to some of you about the performance of America’s communications 
industries on that terrible day.  These industries all performed commendably, often 
heroically.  Americans owe them and their workers a huge debt of gratitude for the 
actions and sacrifices that were made.  Mobilizing immediately, communications 
companies kept us in touch with one another, helped us locate loved ones, expedited 
countless rescue operations, and generally brought us together as a nation and as a world 
as never before.  And at great loss of revenue.
      
      The Commission responded to the events of September 11 by establishing a 
Homeland Security Policy Council and, just recently, we chartered a new Media Security 
and Reliability Council with membership from media companies and related industries.  
This builds upon our already-existing Network Reliability and Interoperability Council 
for telecom.  I was pleased to see so many media company CEOs at the first meeting of 
this new group last month.  So these are good steps and I applaud them, but I’d like to see 
us do even more. I want the FCC to be as aggressive as we can possibly be on homeland 
security.  I have a real sense of urgency about this.  Upgrading network reliability, 
building in systems redundancy, and deploying all available technologies in the war 
against terror are second-to-none national priorities and the FCC has the legislative 
mandate to not only be there, but to be out-front, leading the way.  I don’t believe we can 
afford to wait for a new department of government to be approved, organized and up-
and-running.  We need to be out-front now.  When terror bears its murderous face again, 
I don’t want the tiniest opening for anyone to say that the Commission or the industry 
was timid in any of its efforts.  
      
      The sad plight of so many telecom and dot.com companies is the other great event 
I have been watching from the Commission.  It hasn’t been pleasant.  But I must tell you 
that I am, in spite of it all, and without qualm or doubt, an optimist about the future of 
communications technologies.  Right now, in the world of business analysts and pundits 
and the handicappers of the stock market, that puts me in a pretty tiny minority.  But I am 
used to being in the minority – I’m a minority of one at the FCC, so you just have to call 
them like you see them and get on with the job.  Most of the pundits and analysts of 
telecom are still mired in doom and gloom.  But, you know, tracking great technological 
change -- historical change, really -- is different than tracking stocks.  
      
      Two years ago, the guys and gals supposedly in the know were in high orbit, 
extolling the end of the business cycle, prosperity forever, with telecom leading the way 
into a brave new world.  Then recession hit, and they went from irrational exuberance to 
doomsday pessimism on the turn of a dime.  I think they were wrong both times.  Sure, 
the business plans of many of the dot.coms and start-ups were often faulty, but the 
technologies behind them not only remain – they are proliferating.  The “boom-bust-and-
boom-again” cycle has accompanied other great technology and infrastructure roll-outs 
throughout history, canals and railroads being two examples.  In those cases there was 
excess enthusiasm and risky investment at the outset and the bubbles burst, but the 
infrastructure need endured, the technology was viable, and growth returned.  I think the 
same will happen here.  It won’t be tomorrow, but I think it will be sooner than many of 
the pundits predict. 
      
      There’s another factor at work here: we’re not adequately differentiating the 
forces that are slowing today’s market – the real culprits.  I’m no economist, but I do 
believe a good case can be made that the shake-out in telecoms, insofar as factors strictly 
internal to telecom are concerned, has about run its course.  It is difficult to see how they 
could be discounted much more at this late date.  Driving the market’s decline now -- and 
the sector’s -- are corporate governance problems, accounting depredations, and a 
fundamental disconnect between the stock market and the basic good health of the 
American economy.  We shouldn’t blame all this on telecom technology. 
      
      I do believe that the Commission has some responsibility in this area of corporate 
and accounting excesses.  We need to rely less on the reporting conclusions the 
companies supply and rely more on our own independent analysis of that data for 
companies in the industries that we regulate.  Unfortunately, we have been heading in 
exactly the wrong direction.  We have cut back our accou8nting rules and put out a 
formal notice to see how many more of them we can jettison.  We have indicated to the 
states that we may only collect data for our FCC purposes in the future, so that state 
regulators would then have to go get what they need on their own.  I warned against this 
at the time and voted against that notice, and I will be pressing the Commission to revisit 
this policy direction in light of the clamorous events of recent weeks.  The fact is that we 
must make full use of our existing authority to reduce the chance that accounting 
irregularities and corporate mismanagement will injure American consumers.  
Additionally, we need to let everyone know exactly what happens if there is a threat of 
service cut-backs or cut-offs.  Finally, the Commission must evaluate whether it has 
sufficient authority to do what needs to be done or whether we need to ask Congress for 
additional authority.  I don’t think we should be bashful about any of this.
      
      Let me tell you what we should not do.  What we should not do is use the current 
situation as an excuse to back away from competition.  It is during recessions and tough 
economic times when the calls increase for less competition and increased consolidation.  
We are hearing again that old siren song – that the way out of economic trouble is to get 
bigger, enjoy the economies of scale and reduce competition.  I just don’t buy that line of 
reasoning.  Re-monopolization is not the cure for telecom’s problems.  That is exactly the 
wrong prescription for the industry, and the wrong medicine for the American consumer.
      
      Another important challenge related to the current difficulties being faced by 
communications industries is consolidation. The Nineties brought new rules permitting 
increased consolidation in the broadcasting industry, on the premise that broadcasters 
needed more flexibility in order to compete effectively. These rules paved the way for 
tremendous consolidation in the industry -- going far beyond, I think, what anyone 
expected at the time.  These changes sometimes do create efficiencies that allow 
companies to operate more profitably and on a scale unimaginable just a few years ago. I 
recognize that without a measure of mergers and acquisitions, some stations would have 
gone dark and their communities would have been deprived of service.  But consolidation 
also raises profound questions of public policy as the Federal Communications 
Commission reviews such mergers.  How far should such combinations be allowed to go?  
How much debt can companies safely assume given the vagaries of the market?  How do 
we protect localism, diversity, multiplicity of voices and choices, and the great 
marketplace of ideas that nourishes and sustains our democracy if we allow consolidation 
to run its course?  How do we judge these things?  Who should judge these things? 
      
      We all realize that the world has changed.  That bigness is not necessarily 
badness.  That we live in a global economy where the pressures of competition are 
extreme.  Goodness knows, Alaska is familiar with this!  We cannot turn the clock back 
to a simpler past which never was, truth be told, quite that simple.  So mergers are not 
inherently bad. 
      
      That being said, however, the American people have always harbored a deep 
distrust of excessive industrial consolidation, and they have always posted sentinels at the 
gate to guard against it.  That skepticism persists.  As I talk to Members of Congress, I 
hear widespread, and surprisingly bipartisan, concern about consolidation.  There is 
concern about too much economic power and concern about the loss of localism and 
diversity.  So it strikes me as bedrock that our review of proposed consolidations must 
venture beyond economic efficiencies if we are to ensure that combinations serve the 
public interest.  
      
      We need a national dialogue about all this.  At the Commission we have teed up 
questions of seismic importance concerning America’s telecom and media future,   
ranging from media ownership limits to the transmission of broadband and the existence 
of competition in our telecommunications industries.  All of our rules, basically, are up 
for grabs.  We need to go about this carefully and cautiously.  Imagine if we move 
precipitously ahead and remove, say, all the media ownership limits.  What if that turns 
out later to have been a mistake?  How do you put that genie back in the bottle?  I don’t 
think we’d be able to at that point.  So let’s give this the attention it deserves and let’s 
hear from everyone who has a stake in the outcome.  The public interest is very much at 
stake in how these matters are determined. 
      
      And speaking of the public interest, I never miss an opportunity as I move around 
to talk with my fellow citizens about another matter that is important to me: protecting 
against indecency in the media.  I know this is controversial, but it goes right to heart of 
the public interest responsibility.  Every day I hear from Americans who are fed up with 
the patently offensive programming coming their way so much of the time. I hear from 
parents frustrated with the lack of choices available for their children. I even hear from 
broadcast station owners that something needs to be done about the quality of some of the 
programming they are running. I had a high-powered TV executive in my office a few 
months ago who told me he doesn’t let his children watch television unless he’s there to 
man the remote. I found that kind of sad.  
      
      I’ve referred to a “race to the bottom,” but recently I’m beginning to wonder if 
there even is a bottom to it.  I’m reminded of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. It is 
the best of times; it is the worst of times.  On our TV screens today we have some of the 
best television ever.  And we have undoubtedly -- undoubtedly -- the worst.  
      
      I believe that, as a society, we have a responsibility to protect children from 
content that is inappropriate for them. And when it comes to the broadcast media, the 
Federal Communications Commission has the statutory obligation -- the legal mandate -- 
to protect children from obscene and indecent programming. I take this responsibility 
with utmost seriousness.  Our nation has enacted laws -- Constitutionally sanctioned laws 
-- to protect young people from these excesses.  But the process by which the FCC has 
enforced these laws places inordinate responsibility upon the complaining citizen. When 
someone sends in a complaint, he or she is usually told to supply a recording of the 
program or a transcript of the offending statement before the Commission can even 
proceed. That’s just wrong.  It is the Commission’s responsibility to investigate 
complaints that the law has been violated, not the citizen’s responsibility to prove the 
violations.  I have suggested that broadcasters voluntarily keep tapes or transcripts for a 
reasonable period of time, like 60 or 90 days.  Many already do this.  I am not suggesting 
that broadcasters forward those tapes to Washington or Big brother FCC so we can while 
away the hours pouring over everything going out on the airwaves.  I just think that when 
there is a complaint, there ought to be a record available on how those airwaves were 
used – or abused.
      
      The problem goes far beyond tapes and transcripts, however, and so do 
broadcaster responsibilities.  I believe that if they took more responsibility for what is 
broadcast, particularly when children are likely to be watching, broadcast and cable 
companies could make a huge contribution to our children and to our society. I am 
suggesting that they adopt – you adopt -- a voluntary Code of Conduct.  Actually 
“readopt” would be a more accurate term, because such a code was in place for radio 
from the 1920s and for television from the 1950s until 1983 when it was struck down on 
narrow antitrust grounds.  Through enlightened self-regulation, the industry clamped 
restrictions on the presentations of sexual material, violence, liquor, drug addiction, even 
on excessive advertising. The Code also affirmed broadcaster responsibilities toward 
children, community issues, and public affairs. It didn’t always work perfectly, but it was 
a serious effort premised on the idea that we can be well entertained at levels several cuts 
above the lowest common denominator that now dictates so much programming. 
      
      It would be infinitely preferable, and far quicker, to go the voluntary route rather 
than to have to travel down the usual Washington road of legislation, regulation and 
adjudication, with the years of legal suits, counter-suits and appeals that these inevitably 
generate.  I believe that our radio and television and cable chieftains could come together 
and craft a new code, perfectly able to pass court muster, and one that would serve the 
needs of their businesses as well as those of concerned families. I am asking them to do 
so – now.
      
      I’ve mentioned only a few of the matters of common interest that I hope we can 
work on together.  There are many others.  I look at all these challenges and I see a lot of 
work to be done.  But I believe – I really do – that we can and we will get it done. 
Together.  As I said before, I am an optimist.
      
      I am an optimist about our country.  How could anyone be otherwise after 
September 11 when you look at the unity, the compassion and the patriotism that have 
poured forth from every city, town and hamlet in this country from the North Slope of 
Alaska to Key West, Florida.
      
      I am an optimist about our communications industries because I know we can use 
these stunning new technologies as tools to pry open the doors of economic opportunity 
for all our citizens and to power our economy through the 21st century.                
      
      And I am an optimist about or ability to work together to get the job done.  Each 
of us has a role to play, whether as citizen, businessperson or public servant.  Those of 
you who know me know the high value I place upon the public sector and the private 
sector working together to overcome the many challenges we face.  I have spent most of 
my 30-plus years in Washington trying to build such partnerships, out of a bedrock 
conviction that we best serve the common good when we come together, reason together 
and pull together.  I came to Alaska this week to say how much I am looking forward to 
working with you and pulling with you to make it all happen.
      
      	Thank you.  
      
      


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