CHAIRMAN REED E. HUNDT
                FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
                     THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
                        Washington, D.C.
                          July 27, 1995

                   (As Prepared for Delivery)




When RCA president David Sarnoff unveiled the television at the 1939 World's
Fair he said simply,  "Now we add sight to sound."

Fifty-six years later we know there was a lot more to it than that.  RCA made
TVs, but television made us.  

Speaking personally, at age 47, I know it made me.

I grew up with the Cleaver family.  I thought Dobie Gillis was a role model. 
As a newlywed I watched Hill St. Blues with my bride.  While watching St.
Elsewhere, I fed a bottle to my first child.  And when my wife and I hit 40
Something we watched Thirty Something thinking it was the Nostalgia
Channel.  Thanks to TV, my generation has shared terrific entertainment,
election night drama, tragic assassinations, a decade of war, and a walk on the
moon.

We've also seen how TV educated not just us, but also our children --
particularly in their preschool years.  My wife and I are very glad that our
three kids have been able watch some educational television.  

But all adults in this country are concerned about the values we pass on to our
children.  We wonder if television is hindering rather than helping our efforts
to teach values to our kids.

Here is a deeply disturbing statistic.  Eighty percent of Americans think TV is
harmful to society, and especially to children.

Children themselves report that television encourages them to take part in
sexual activity too soon, to show disrespect for their parents, to lie and to
engage in aggressive behavior.

Fifty-six years after Sarnoff unveiled the RCA television, we have all seen
enough to know that it's high time to ask these questions:  What is TV doing
to our country and our kids?  Is it good or bad?  And in any event, how could
TV be better?  

These questions in particular must be asked by the Federal Communications
Commission.  It is our job to make sure that broadcast licensees use the public
property of the airwaves to serve the "public interest, convenience and
necessity."

This is the prime directive Congress has given the FCC.  

We at the FCC have to weigh the pleasure Americans take from television
against the alarming conclusions of science.  First, more than 1000 studies,
including reports from the Surgeon General and the National Institute of Mental
Health, show a "significant link" between "heavy exposure to TV violence and
subsequent aggressive behavior" and lower levels of positive or altruistic
behavior.  Some studies have concluded that TV accounts for an increase in the
level of violence in our society by between 5 and 15%.  

Second, exposure to TV violence is a problem for virtually every American
child.  Preschoolers watch 28 hours of television a week.  More than 90% of
programs during children's prime viewing hours are violent.  Every year, the
average American child watches more than 1,000 rapes, murders, armed
robberies and assaults and the average American teenager views 14,000 sex
references on TV.

Third, television portrays a world of conduct that the great majority of
Americans may watch but nevertheless find objectionable.  For example, this
past Monday children could watch daytime talk shows on (I quote from the
program guide):  `Jealous wives,' `Little girls obsessed with their looks,' `One-
night stands,' `Women lacking self-esteem,' `Teens who lie about abuse,' `Sexy
lingerie for criticized wives,' and `Philanderer.'

When complaining about TV, few can resist the temptation to point fingers. 
Some blame broadcasters, calling them greedy.  Others say competition lowers
the quality of television.  Many criticize advertisers for rejecting quality.  And
always parents are blamed for not just turning the darn set off. 

But I'm not here to blame broadcasters, advertisers or parents.  

I'm here to point a finger at the only institution with the responsibility to act
exclusively for the public interest -- the Federal Communications Commission. 


When the FCC was first giving licenses to broadcasters, it had a grand and
cheery vision of what TV could do for the country.  In 1945 FCC chairman
Paul Porter said "television's illuminating light will go far, we hope, to drive
out the ghosts that haunt the dark corners of our minds -- ignorance, bigotry,
fear.  It will be able to inform, educate and entertain an entire nation with a
magical speed and vividness. . ."  

In many respects that vision came true.  Television really has informed,
educated and entertained our entire nation.

But the FCC did not foresee or guard against the downsides of television.  

So when we gave out broadcast licenses, we made a colossal mistake.  In the
bargain with broadcasters on behalf of the public we did not ask for specific,
concrete, and real commitments from broadcasters to serve the "public interest,
convenience and necessity." 
 
The significance of the blunder was not immediately apparent.  Trying to
persuade families to buy TV sets, in 1951 the networks scheduled 27 hours of
children's TV a week.  Parents thought TV was educational as well as good,
clean fun for kids like me.

But after TVs were sold to almost all households, the focus on family
entertainment began to fade.  Children's quality shows gradually diminished. 
Violence increased.

Congressional hearings drew attention to the deterioration of the medium, but
through the '50s the Commission did nothing.

Then, in April 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minow announced an assault on
the do-nothing era in his famous first speech to broadcasters.  He told them
they would lose their licenses if they did not do something about the "vast
wasteland" of television broadcasting.  

The "vast wasteland" has become the most famous description of television
ever uttered.  But, as Minow now admits in his new book, Abandoned in the
Wasteland, he had limited success.

Meanwhile, TV confined kids' shows to Saturday morning.  Children became
bullseyes for the arrows of electronic advertising.  We began, as one European
critic has said, "to raise our kids as consumers more than as citizens."

In the 1970's Democratic and Republican chairmen of the FCC fought against
this trend.  President Nixon's chairman Dean Burch and President's Ford's
chairman Dick Wiley both courageously pressed TV to do more for, and less
against, children.  

But these FCC chairmen were not able to use specific, concrete, real public
interest obligations as a tool for protecting children against TV's dangers and
guaranteeing that TV would surely benefit kids.  These FCC chairmen were
hampered by the vague, vacuous, confusing, nonspecific language of the
"public interest" standard. 

In 1980, to fix this condition, President Carter's chairman, Charlie Ferris,
launched a rulemaking that would have imposed on broadcasters specific
requirements to deliver children's educational shows.  But before he could form
a political consensus, a new administration came to town.

The new chairman, Mark Fowler, reacted to the vagueness of the public interest
standard by going in the opposite direction.  Instead of making public service
obligations concrete and real, he sought in effect to eliminate them.  

As he said: "the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be
replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants . . . the public's
interest, then, defines the public interest."

Putting his point more colorfully, Mark said the TV is just a "toaster with
pictures." 

Mark Fowler is a friend of mine and a principled man.  I disagree with him on
principle. 

This particular toaster is not just browning bread.  It is cooking our country's
goose.

Based on the principle that the FCC should treat broadcasters as only in
business for the money, in 1984 the FCC repealed the policy that stations
should air children's educational and informational shows.  Predictably, the
three major networks went from 11 hours a week of such shows to 2 hours a
week in 1990.  

In 1984, the FCC repealed regulations on commercial time limits in children's
shows.  Predictably, toy-based programs for kids boomed from 13 in 1980 to
more than 70 in 1987.   

The amount of commercials children saw per year doubled from 20,000 in the
late 1970's to about 40,000 in 1987.  Kids today can identify more cereals than
Presidents.  

At the same time, while zeroing out the public interest obligation of
broadcasters, the Commission triggered a tsunami of competitive pressure on
broadcasters.  Starting in 1981 the FCC increased the number of commercial
TV licenses by an astounding 50 percent.

Predictably, inevitably, the cutthroat competition for eyeballs forced even the
most altruistic and well-intentioned broadcasters to reduce the resources they
could devote to the fundamentally non-commercial effort of serving the public
interest -- particularly to the effort of delivering educational TV to children.  If
every broadcaster had been under concrete public interest obligations, then all
the new stations could have added to the supply of quality and educational
kidvid.  Instead, none had such a specific duty, so in a competitive environment
none could afford to deliver that product. 

In reaction to the FCC's philosophically principled abandonment of any effort
to give meaning to the public interest standard, in 1990 Congress passed the
Children's TV Act.  

The FCC turned this law into another defeat for kids.  

Charged with the duty to implement the Children's TV Act, the FCC chose not
to require specific time commitments for children's educational TV.  As a
result of the lack of specific public interest duties and the rigors of competition,
there isn't any regularly-scheduled weekday children's programming on the
traditional networks.  One new network is an exception, but most of its kids'
shows have little or no educational content.  

Most broadcasters are disturbed at what's happened to TV.  But they say, and I
agree, that it takes serious time, money, and commitment to program children's
educational television.  It's easier and more profitable to do almost anything
else.

All broadcasters are driven by the pressures of the marketplace to compete.  As
long as the FCC does not ask all broadcasters to deliver concrete, specific,
public interest services, in the heat of competition no single broadcaster can
afford to do anything less commercial than the next broadcaster.  

Some people console themselves with a fallacy.  They say we don't need
children's educational TV, because children would rather watch violent
cartoons anyhow.  

My kids would rather stay on the playground than go into the classroom.  That
doesn't mean we shouldn't have classrooms or public schools.  And just
because television can offer electronic playgrounds, that doesn't mean that it
shouldn't also give us some over the air classrooms.  Parents ought to have
both choices.  

Market values aren't necessarily family values.  And when the FCC commits
itself exclusively to promoting profit maximizing in broadcasting, it has not
done its duty under the law for the kids and parents of this country.  

Fortunately, we have a second chance to figure out how TV can help us raise
our kids.  Our second chance might be our last chance.  

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of the analog chapter of television's
history, and the beginning of the beginning of the digital chapter.  Tomorrow
the FCC will commence a rulemaking concerning the possible grant to today's
analog TV broadcasters of new licenses for new spectrum so that they can
broadcast a digital signal.

The new digital television signal can send not just one channel for each TV
station, but as many as five of the same quality of today's picture.  Or it can be
used to deliver a new high quality eye-poppingly clear picture called high
definition.  Or it can be used one minute for five standard digital channels and
the next minute for one high definition digital channel.

Over the next decade I believe that new televisions receiving analog and digital
signals, and smartened up with computer equipment, will spread into every
home just as combined VHF/UHF TVs penetrated the market in the 1960's. 
The country had a chance at the beginning of the analog TV era to take
advantage of the full potential of television.  We have now a second chance to
use this unbelievably powerful medium to "inform, educate, and entertain an
entire nation." 

As we enter the digital age of television, we must not waste the vast land of
TV's potential.

Some say that the Federal Communications Commission should not concern
itself with the impact of TV on our kids or our country, because the First
Amendment bars any government restraint of free speech.

The First Amendment's principal purpose is to preclude the government from
rewarding or punishing anyone for expressing opinions or asserting facts.  The
First Amendment was not intended to limit the capability of parents, adults or
government to protect and raise children.

Notwithstanding First Amendment challenges, courts have repeatedly held that
government can require certain magazines on open newsstands to be in brown
paper wrappers.  Government can zone certain kinds of stores away from
residential neighborhoods.  Government can require kids on motorcycles to
wear safety helmets.  The FCC can forbid radio and television shows from
broadcasting indecent material until after 10 p.m., when almost all kids are or
should be in bed.  None of these actions are inconsistent with the First
Amendment.  And reasonable steps to use the airwaves in a real, specific,
concrete way to provide public interest programs are also not barred by the
First Amendment.

So what is to be done?

First, the FCC ought to get rid of rules restricting commercial competition in
broadcasting, while replacing the empty public interest standard with limited
but clear and enforceable public interest requirements.  

Specifically, we need new rules implementing the Children's TV Act.  Parents
need good choices when they turn on the TV.  The FCC has an obligation
under law to make sure free over-the-air commercial TV delivers the choice of
kids' educational TV.  

Second, just as the President and many Congressmen and Senators have said: 
parents need not just something to choose, but also the power to choose.  They
need information and need computer hardware or software -- like the V-chip --
to help them select from the avalanche of programs pouring uninvited over the
air into their homes.  

Third, I think broadcasters in each community should develop a Contract for
Kids and Community.  In each market all broadcasters would state concretely
and specifically how they intend to give parents a choice of high quality,
decent, nonviolent and educational programming, and how they would give
parents the power to choose.  

In each market broadcasters could tell their audience at the beginning of their
licensing period what they intend to do for kids and the community they serve. 
Then we at the FCC could base their license renewal on their success or failure
in performing as they had promised.  Market by market, the broadcasters'
Contracts for Kids and Community would give real meaning, on a local level,
to public interest obligations.  No more vagueness.  No more confusion.  In
each market we would have clear commitments by which to measure whether
broadcasters have met their public interest obligations.

In his book Newt Minow says:  "If I had it to do over again, I would
concentrate every effort on improving children's TV . . .  If I had to do it over
again, that's where I would draw the battle line."

None of the Commissioners at today's FCC should have to live with that
regret.  

We can draw the line and fight for kids now.

I'm as optimistic now about the future of television as FCC Chairman Paul
Porter was in 1945, and I have the benefit of experience that he was denied. 
We now know what the FCC has done that causes harm.  We know what the
FCC and all of us can do differently.  We'll be hearing from lots of lawyers
and lobbyists inside the Beltway about how we should proceed, but we need to
hear from the American public.  You can let me know what you think by
writing the FCC or sending an E-Mail to:  KIDSTV@FCC.GOV.  

In the end, we -- the FCC, broadcasters and the American people -- need to
recognize that TV can be more than it has been. The question is:  Do we want
TV to help children or hurt them?  

Because that's the choice.  

Let's make the right one.

                              -FCC-