Powell: Media policy too important to rush

Wednesday, April 10, 2002 | 11:07 a.m.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell said a defining moment in recognizing how information is processed by a new generation of consumers came to him when he saw his children staring at the blank ceiling one day.

"What are you doing?" Powell asked, relating the story for a capacity crowd gathered at a National Association of Broadcasters breakfast Tuesday.

"I'm watching a movie," the boy replied, despite there being no image projected or television screen present.

Powell then expressed his amazement as the boy recited 35 straight minutes of dialog from a popular film he had memorized. His other son, he noted, could recount seven episodes of a television series.

Powell also said while the Internet generation may not have the historical perspectives their parents have, they have the computer know-how to gather and retain information quickly.

"They may not know much about Joseph Stalin," Powell said, "but they can get on the Internet and find more information about Joseph Stalin than we ever knew."

Powell said his children's ability to find and process information made him realize how people growing up in the Internet age gather information differently than their parents and that policy decisions related to the media are far too important to rush.

Powell and two FCC colleagues, Michael Copps and Kevin Martin, addressed separate NAB audiences Tuesday as the association met in Las Vegas for its fourth day.

The convention -- at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton and the Sands Expo Center -- wraps up Thursday afternoon and has brought about 94,000 people to the city.

The regulators didn't give any further hints as to how they would act on some of the key industry issues on the horizon. In a question-and-answer session with ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, Powell said he would continue to work with television stations on an individual basis to bring about the conversion of more than 300 stations from analog to digital format.

The FCC is working to covert the nation's television stations to digital broadcasting by 2006. The conversion will give consumers better quality television pictures as well as free up spectrum for other uses.

In the afternoon session, attended by several members of Great Britain's House of Commons -- at NAB to learn how Americans regulate the broadcast industry -- the two FCC commissioners and a policymaker discussed as a panel the same issues raised by Powell.

Martin and Copps said they were surprised by the number of television stations that had requested waivers to deadlines for converting to digital transmissions.

Martin added the court decisions that have led to commissioners reconsidering ownership rules come at an opportune time.

"We're all interested in providing sufficient competition," Martin said. "I think the courts are telling us, 'You need to justify your rules.' A lot of the rules (involving parties owning more than one station in a market or owning a newspaper and a station in the same market) were adopted before we had satellite, cable TV and the Internet. We aren't necessarily going to eliminate all these rules, just justify their need."

"The industry is changing so rapidly that we're going to have to review the rules again in four years," added Nancy Victory of the White House's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which monitors broadcast issues.

Victory said her agency is still gathering information and the White House will weigh in on ownership policy issues when the FCC takes up the matter.

The panelists agreed while numerous content objections have been raised as broadcasters air more controversial material, content matters are a local issue and regulators are more likely to side with protecting a broadcaster's First Amendment rights than to step into a content controversy.

Although admitting he receives dozens of e-mails daily on content matters, Copps said it's difficult to make a case on decency standards, especially when there are so many different broadcast choices available for viewers who can easily watch something else if they're offended by what they see.

"We're not a content-regulatory agency," Copps said. "We're a content-enabling agency."