From The New Yorker By James Surowiecki:
"The broadcasting industry is well acquainted with political favoritism and corporate welfare. Local TV stations have consistently been among the most lucrative businesses in the country, but they have never been asked to pay for their use of the public airwaves. In a sense, broadcasters are the modern equivalent of the railroads. In the nineteenth century, the railroads were given tens of millions of acres of land (adding up, eventually, to roughly ten per cent of the country); now broadcasters have been given billions of dollars’ worth of electromagnetic real estate.The government subsidized the railroads because it believed that America’s economy needed a modern transportation system. It has subsidized TV stations because it wanted the media to serve the public interest. Broadcasters get their licenses free, and, in exchange, they’re supposed to keep the citizenry informed. Commendable as this mandate may seem, it has very little to do with the business of broadcast television. Today, most Americans—ninety per cent or so—have cable or satellite TV. The airwaves are used less and less. Nor is there any evidence that the public interest is better served by broadcasters than by cable channels. That the major networks showed just an hour of coverage per night of the national political conventions suggests that it is not. (And it’s unclear who is to blame, exactly, for the fact that two out of five Americans think Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11th attacks.) If people would rather watch an episode of “Survivor” than a speech by Al Gore, the network will air “Survivor.” This is a sound business decision. But taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for it. "
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