Now, before we start i want to thank a couple of folks and a couple of institutions. I want to thank the institute for technology, law and policy. The institute for public representation, which is also part of Georgetown Law Center, the betten foundation and no civil la foundation for sponsoring this event. I also want to thank senator richard blumenthal, and i want to thank jamie who is a Research Fellow at georgetown and kind of my personal law clerk and doing a fabulous job. And alexander givens whos the head of the institute who some of you may have heard broke her leg when she and her son or daughter were shopping at h m in friendship heights, a shoplifter knocked them over and down a flight of stairs. I was in that h m, like, the day before. If people could send well wishes to alex, shes done a fabulous job running the institute. I also want to thank the other georgetown students gathered by Andy Schwartzman, one of our panelists, who are going to be helping today with various and sundry logistics. Let me set the stage what are we talking about today. So in may of this year, Sinclair Broadcast Group announced its intention to buy broadcast licenses of Tribune Media company. St seeking approval both from the federal Communications Commission and department of justice for the merger which, if consummated, will result in sinclair owning 233 stations covering 72 of american viewers. The next largest tv broadcaster would have 78 fewer stations. At the same time, the fcc will vote tomorrow to eliminate or loosen several of the media ownership rules including newspaper broadcast ownership rule, the tv radio crossownership rule and the local tv ownership rule. The pai fcc has already reinstated a rule that counts uhf stationings as half a station for purposes of the ownership rule. And lets just take a pause. How many of you know what a uhf station is . Okay, every is there anybody under the able of 40 the age of 40 concern. [laughter] oh, i saw three hands. Well have an opportunity to talk about that a little later and whether that was a rule that should have been reinstated or whether chairman pais has engaged in, actually, reregulation which really hasnt been his forte since hes been at the fcc. The other thing the fcc did in the last couple weeks, last month or so, was eliminated the main studio rule which requires a local broadcaster to maintain a studio in its community of license. And it sounds like a really kind of old and cricketty and unimportant rule, but i think actually when you combine consolidation with the getting rid of the need to have a presence in a local community, i think it actually is pretty meaningful. So maybe well get to that today. So these issues are, obviously, extremely timely with vote coming tomorrow. Were going to talk about whether this merger is in the Public Interest and whether media ownership rules make sense in this day and age when you have many multiple outlets, 500 cable channels, an internet thats chock a block of information, do they make sense. So let me talk about how today is going to go. Senator blumenthals not here yet, so as everybody knows, when he comes, we will let him speak regardless of what were doing. So i think what well do is well start off with a debate. And the debates going to focus largely on the ownership rules. Not so much on the merger. Then we will follow with the panel, and then we will have audience question and answer. And there are cards on your seats. I am not going to do the thing where i call on people. Thats bad. We are if you have a question, please write it down and, jamie, are you going to be the one collecting them . Okay, raise your hand and walk around and show people who you are. Raise your hand okay, thank you. Yeah. Dont be shy. Be like me. Okay, good. [laughter] show people. They will be collecting the cards, and jamie will go through them and select we wont have a whole lot of time for audience q a, but hopefully, folks will stay afterwards and answer more questions. So lets start with the debate. Now, were very, very lucky i think it was, what, it was 9 30 this morning i got an email from john hain who was supposed to argue in favor of loosening the ownership rules that he was too ill to come. I was, i think, still in my pajamas. I was not happy but, thankfully, he brought in his place a fantastic substitute who ive known for years, jerry fritz, whos the executive Vice President for strategic and Legal Affairs for one media which is a joint venture controlled by sinclair. So jerry, i mean, literally at the last minute has agreed to debate the very excellent David Goodfriend who some of you may know from some of his appearances on msnbc. He is the principal of the Goodfriend Group and also adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center. So without further ado, each debater will have seven minutes to debate, and then whoever goes first which i believe is going to be david will have another two minutes to respond. So, david, the floors all yours. [inaudible conversations] thank you, gigi. I have to say again, gigis not the only one whos grateful here that jerry showed up. I am too. He literally got last minute notice of this and has stepped in, and i think thats, that deserves all our thanks. And now with that, i would like to take him on. [laughter] were going to hear a lot today and tomorrow at the fcc about how the world has changed. The world has changed. The world has changed since the ownership rules were first promulgated by the fcc back when jerry worked at the fcc, and that was a little bit ago. [laughter] the world has changed. Theres the internet. The world has changed, theres cable tv. The world has changed, look at all the Different Social Media platforms we have today. The world has changed and, therefore, these antiquated, oldfashioned broadcast rules have got to go. Because, the theory continues, thats the only way we can still have free over the air broadcast tv. Thats the only way to survive in the modern world. Now, if thats where the story ended, i would have to concede you win, jerry. Thank you. [laughter] fortunately for me and for the rest of us, though, thats not where the story ends because thats not where the story began. The story began when broadcasters in this country got a great, great deal. It was a trade. We are going to give you, we, the American People, the american taxpayers are going to give you free spectrum licenses, the best that there is in every single market. And not only that, these spectrum licenses that are worth with billions of dollars today under todays law, you can sell them if you want and get billions of dollars more. Free. From the United States taxpayer. But it doesnt stop there. The laws passed in this institution give broadcasters even more value. You, the broadcaster, are guaranteed distribution on cable and satellite tv. Show me a business person who would not love that deal. Guaranteed distribution of your product. In law. You, the broadcaster, are given a legal monopoly. Thats right, a monopoly under the copyright law to provide network programming. You are the only one in your market permitted to do so. If i want to buy a newspaper from another city, i can go to a bookstore and find a newspaper from another city. If i want to go on the internet, speaking of the internet, and find content from anywhere in the world, i can. But not when it comes to the contempt on broadcast content on broadcast tv. No, we the american taxpayer give broadcasters a monopoly for networkaffiliated content. And we also from time to time when were worried about the budget and taxes and where revenues going to come from like we are right now during tax reform, we ask is there any possible way to get some additional revenue from these licenses . What if we charged a fee for using this public property . No, say the broadcasters. No fees. We want it for free as weve always had it. Now we are supposed to get something in return. The American People are supposed to get something in return, and the bargain always went Something Like this. Number one, we get free over the air programming. Advertisesupported, available to 100 of house households in the United States. For free. Number two, we get local news, weather and, yes, sports because thats important. Localism. We get that as a Public Service from the broadcaster. And the other thing were supposed to get and this is where we get to our conversation today were supposed to get a wide variety of perspectives. Diversity of viewpoint, diversity of perspectives. We all know this countrys filled with different viewpoints. We also know that the owner is boss. And if the opener as boss says owner as boss says i want the viewpoint to be this, guess what . Thats what the viewpoint is going to be. And we, the American People, say to the broadcaster take it, take it all. Have it for free on us provided we get those things back. Its actually played out that way even in the midst of this vast market with all these different choices and all these different forms of technology according to the i Pew Charitable trust. 82 percent of americans across all age groups trust local broadcasts the most for local news. Local broadcast is trusted the most for local news. By the way, that survey also found that people trust their local broadcast news more than they trust their own family. [laughter] for whats going on locally. Now, in my view if you want all the freebies, its got to come with the favors in return that weve asked for. You have to provide local news, and you have to provide a variety of voices. And if you want to take away those restrictions, thats fine, just give back all the goodies youve gotten in return. Steve scalise over on the house side, Republican Leadership member, introduced a bill multiple congresses that says well get rid of all these regulations on broadcast, but youre not going to have mustcarry and the copyright exclusivity anymore, and guess what, broadcasters . Fight it. What we want is all that matters. Not what you want, the public. Now were going to talk about a specific transaction, a specific broadcaster. Its sinclair. And theyre represented here today. And were going to ask ourselves what happens when big broadcasters get bigger . Well, ill give you a little preview. Sinclair, when it buys a station, fires local reporters, local sportscasters, local staff and sends those functions to baltimore, its headquarters. And tribune, which it attempts to buy in this transaction, happens to have a better track record. In fact, we did a study of local news at both companies and found that at the top three stations that provide local news at both companies, tribune provides twice as much. Sinclair must prove to you today that by them getting bigger, the local news that tribune provides is either going to be just as good or even better after the transaction. Its past its prologue and you ask people in Oklahoma City or rochester, new york, or seattle where sinclair has bought stations, it passes prologue, it aint gonna get better. Its gonna get worse. Which begs the question, what are we the American People getting from this bargain . And why should these ownership limits be lifted so they can get even bigger . Because it passes prologue and the behavior of the nations largest bro broadcaster tells us anything, it doesnt work out well for the American People. Jerry . Thanks, david. And thanks, gigi, for the invitation. I thought about saving my head today to emulate my friend [laughter] but i dont think i could pull it off. [laughter] i apologize if i have not read all of the pleadings in this proceeding, but i have been a part of these rules since i first worked for chairman wiley and commissioner lee back in 1975 through my first, through my fcc staff time reviewing station sales in the mid 70s to my time with chairman fowler during the Reagan Administration in deregulating some of these rules in the 80s and trying to cope with them and advising station owners for the past 30 years. So i bring a little bit of perspective that might be enlightening. That might be enlightening. The question today, as david suggests, is whether we need fcc rules limiting broadcast ownership in the age of ubiquitous, High Resolution internet streaming, new over the top services and more competition than ever from nvpd distribution. We do not. In todays hypercompetitive media marketplace, antitrust principles are more than adequate to govern consolidation in Television Broadcasting. We dont need separate rules administered by an independent agency imposing artificial and arbitrary definitions of competition and diversity. All of which were chosen decades ago as political compromises rather than in response to rigorous thought about how Television Distribution works. Two basic premises guide my views. First, i believe free over the air broadcasting is a Vital National asset. A treasure even. I dont take it for granted. Whatever you say about programming markets or retransmission consent or advertising markets or the highest and best use of spectrum, i urge you to consider this if free over the air broadcasting did not exist and the fcc allocated spectrum for it today, would investors provide capital, and would the new broadcasters be able to outbid internet or multichannel pay platforms to acquire the very highest cost and most popular programming and produce hours and hours of live news in every market . And that is day in and day out and make it available for free . Access to people is no longer a barrier to entry, but nobody else does these things today. Second, i understand that theres no free lunch. Weve chosen to finance over the air Television Broadcasting by allowing broadcasters to compete for revenue in the marketplace. The decision to finance free over the air broadcasting with profits earned in the marketplace means that broadcasters cannot take anything for granted. They have to earn their supply of programming by paying for it. Nobody requires cbs stations to broadcast nfl games. Nobody requires the nfl to distribute its programming on a platform thats available for free or to sell games to nbc when espn and fox sports will pay more. When i hear the typical arguments against broadcast consolidation, the one fact that never gets acknowledged is the simple premise that broadcasters have to compete against unregulated competitors for every minute of programming and every dollar of revenue. But they will say broadcasters, as you heard david say, have special Public Interest obligations, and they got their spectrum for free, and that justifies limits on control. The problem is one does not follow the other. The canard that broadcasters got their spectrum for free and that justifies ownership regulations that thwart their competitiveness drives me crazy. [laughter] very few stations are in the hand of origin ally seven sees who got their stations for free. I was there when chairman fowler dissented to giving the original cellular licenses away to the incumbent phone companies for free with no Public Interest but responsibilities. The same was true for dbs licenses, most of all the licenses dbs, cellular and broadcast issued for free have changed hands to buyers when made market price. More to the point, how they got their stations and limits on ownership is an intellectual non sequitur. Ownership limits are not logically derivative from how a station was acquired. The fccs politically divide ownership rules have very harmful effects in the market. I was an aboutive witness in the absurd active witness in the absurd unintended consequence of making washington, d. C. A monopoly newspaper town when the fcc made joual briton separate the star from w [inaudible] and it died. Nationally, we do not need ownership caps. Because those particular rules prevent new competition to existing National Distribution platforms. As Preston Patton pointed out in his, just two days ago in his wall street journal oped, the rules have the effect of freezing National Television to abs, nbc, cbs and fox. They have 100 of american eyeballs. Why shouldnt others have that same option . Locally we dont need ownership restrictions east because we need either because we need to allow those who are willing to invest in local markets to organize in a way that allows them to be as profitable as competing platforms. In the system weve chosen to finance broadcasting, profits commensurate with the profits of competing platforms are not just good, theyre essential. Even if you belief that, oh believe that, oh, broadcast ownership should be regulated beyond antitrust, what ownership rules are right for 2018 and beyond . I reject as preposterous the argument that the ownership restrictions on the books, written at a time when people learned of pearl harbor bombings from three over the air networks before facebook, before google, amazon, netflix or even directv or davids former employers at dish existed. And when at t was still just a Long Distance provider, whether that is the best framework for the 2 isst century 21st century. I sometimes feel like rip van winkle. Well, heads up. The world has changed, rip. [laughter] get over it. The u. S. Shows the financed broadcasting through market profits. That was easy when broadcasters had no competition except for each other. Restrictive ownership limits have bad consequences, but they were not existential threats for free television. If you want the marketplace to find a way to bring you local news, nfl games, highcost scripted programming to everyone for free, you have to let the marketplace figure out how to do it. Because programmers are going to sell to t