 Good morning. Welcome to the Alliance for Community Media's Public Policy Summit. I'm Sylvia Strobel, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Community Media. I want to thank the New America Foundation for hosting us here today, and providing streaming services so that our members around the country can learn and hear. We have a packed schedule with outstanding panelists and speakers, including FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Before we begin, I would like to introduce Sasha Meinrath, Director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. Sasha is a well-known expert on community wireless networks, municipal broadband, and telecommunications policy. Sasha is a co-founder of Measurement Lab, a distributed server platform for researchers around the world to deploy internet measurement tools, advance network research, and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. He also coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership of open-source wireless integrators, researchers, implementers, and companies dedicated to the development of open-source, interoperable, low-cost wireless technologies. Sasha serves on the Leadership Committee of Camtia Education Foundation, as well as the Advisory Council for the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Sasha and his team also worked closely with the ACM recently to publish the white paper Full Spectrum Community Media, Expanding Public Access to Communications Infrastructure, a copy of which is outside. The paper notes that the key to sustaining community media will be expanding beyond the provision of public access television and participating in the provision of local broadband, operation of radio broadcast licenses, as well as other communications infrastructure. Please join me in welcoming Sasha. Howdy, so welcome to the New America Foundation. We're sort of a public policy think tank located here inside the Beltway, and we cover a variety of different areas. So we do a lot with health care reform. We've done a lot with foreign policy analysis. The Open Technology Initiative, which I direct, is sort of the tech telecom arm of our work. But it's also very much focused on media. And if you're like most people, you're thinking, well, what is the connection? And I hope that over the course of the day, you'll see that the technology telecom side of work and the localism, the new media side of the work that all of us are doing are critically important. So my own background comes out of the space that you guys currently inhabit. I founded and directed something called the Independent Media Center in Urbana-Champaign. And one of the core organizers for the indie media movement spent five years as a treasurer there. So every time there was something going down somewhere in the world, I was the guy responsible for the logistics, the back end of supporting those protests, a lot of the media production from the streets that was happening, et cetera. From that, you could think of it as that was like my activating moment 10 years ago in terms of creating a lot of media from the streets and then looking for places where we could distribute what we had documented. And that led me very quickly into a lot of the peg access, local access, TV access space, as well as into the internet space. And I've always viewed them as sort of flip sides of the same coin, both vitally important, but also under constant threat. So in Illinois, I was one of the people that was pushing back against a lot of the U-verse fiascos as they've turned out to be and have been systematically critical of the attempts by and the successful attempts by the Illinois legislature to really sort of shut down or marginalize local access. And in all of this work over the last 10 years, I always kind of felt like we're doing amazing work on the ground. We're doing phenomenal work on the ground, all across the country. And yet at the top here in D.C., there's this massive disconnect, a real shift away from diversity and localism and the kind of important work that should be supported through our national policies. And so for me, after connecting a lot of these dots together back in 2007, I kind of made the leap to kind of come inside the belly of the beast here in Washington, D.C. But part of what we kept with us, part of the way that the Open Technology Initiative is in fact created, has always been to keep at least one of our three feet directly in local communities, local organizing, in the kind of work that you guys do day in and day out, because we think that is vitally important to the future of democracy here in the United States and abroad. And so I will end by simply saying that the experience that you have is invaluable. It is critical if we're going to win the battles that we fight here inside the Beltway. And I hope that over the course of this day that you will both glean a lot of useful information in terms of here's how these policies are going to directly impact the work that all of you do. But I also hope that I and the other experts that are up here will glean a lot about what's happening on the ground in all of your lives and that by the time we get to pints later on this evening, we might be able to sit down and grab a couple cocktail napkins and visualize about how we can actually improve the flow of information, the flow of communication, the efficacy of our lobbying and of the work that we're doing here and on the ground. And so I'll close by simply saying that I feel like we are, and I think this is often overused, but we are definitely at a critical juncture. We're at a point in time where the FCC, where the FTC, where a number of different key agencies are reconsidering what it means to support localism, support media diversity, support public interest obligations, themes that have been coming up, coming up, coming up again and again and again, and where the decisions that are made over the next six months to a year are going to reverberate for the next 10, 20, two generations. And so in many ways the work that we're doing here today is laying a foundation for collaboration, laying the groundwork for the battles that we absolutely will be fighting and must win if there is going to be a meaningful future to local community across the country. So I'm going to turn this over now, I think, to Tom. Is that correct? All right, I'm turning it back over to Sylvia. But please make yourselves at home. I really look forward to meeting you and learning about the work that you're doing. And I look forward to learning over the course of this day. So thank you very much. Thanks, Sasha. And I just want to thank Sasha and all his colleagues here at New America for the work that they did on our White Paper earlier this year. It's been an incredible, it was an incredible amount of work on their part. But I think it's really given our members a new kind of reason to really rally and really, I think, brought out the critical importance of community media as well as the future of community media and where we need to go. It's now my privilege to introduce the moderator of our first panel, Tom Glazier, Night Media Policy Fellow for the New America Foundation. Tom coordinates the Media Policy Program at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. Tom? Thank you, Sylvia. I'd like to invite the panelists to come up to the stage and you'll notice on the screen is an image of one of the panelists. It's 6 a.m. or 6.30 a.m. in California. Fortunately, he's not in Hawaii, otherwise it would be a little earlier. Aloha, Nando Vaz. Ah, he is here. So the purpose of this panel is to cover national public policy, the policies that surround the core policies in which you may be more interested. But it's important to look at these policies because they set a context for the space in which you're operating. And I have an excellent set of panelists here who will discuss the various elements. Now, we are hoping to cover net neutrality, universal service, LPFM and media ownership. And because that's not enough to cover in one hour, and there's some movement on right-of-way that's coming out of the national broadband panel, it has some plays into your world, and also some work on some tax and cell phones. We'll add those into the agenda as well. So we have 62 minutes. I have six panelists, and I am hoping to get to some questions and make this pretty interactive. So this is going to be a fast-run panel, and if you see a hook coming out of my arm and hooking them off the stage and moving things on, please, I apologize in advance. When I discussed the panel with Sylvia, her advice was to make it digestible and present these topics in a way that's relatively, for people who are relatively unfamiliar, who want to get just a grasp on these issues. And I fully expect the panelists to do that, but we will cover the topics quickly. Just as by way of saying how I came to this, I spent a lot of time working on the full spectrum community media paper, and more recently I've been working with Rob McCausland, who some of you may know, on his communitymediadatabase.org map, doing it, making an effort to mapping community media, not just LPFM, but not just community media centers, but also LPFM and other outlets. There's a way to sort of catalog what's there, because if we do that, we can help each other build a stronger community media sector. And I, for one, think this is incredibly important, and there is a great opportunity to do more of that. So we're going to go down the panelists, actually, almost as they're ordered with Sean popping in towards the end. We'll start with Cori Wright, who is from pre-press. He's worked long and hard on media policy issues. And I've asked her to give us an overview of media ownership and perhaps also touch a little bit on the AT&T mobile merger that's in the news, and that given the potential consolidation of the market there and the way AT&T, you versus me, playing out, I think is probably interesting to you. But we'll start with the media ownership and where are we on the quadrennial review, and what is the quadrennial review? Sure. Well, I will try to do this as succinctly as I can. Media ownership issues, preventing excessive consolidation, has been a signature issue for the media reform community for a long time now. The core concept is to make sure that you have local owners who are locally responsive to the community and provide programming that community needs. You know, for a very long battle against extreme odds in terms of political power and lack of capital, this community has been extraordinarily successful. There was a move to try to relax the rules in 2002. We went to court and we prevailed. In 2007, there was another effort to relax the rules, and just this July, a court once again ruled in favor of public interest parties that the FCC had failed to justify its rationale for relaxing some of its rules. Some of the opportunities and challenges that we face as we are now entering another quadrennial media ownership review, the FCC has to review its rules every four years, is that we have some great opportunities and some great challenges, I think. Number one is the internet, and the internet is a magnificent tool that has expanded the opportunity. I apologize in advance. We have had some connectivity problems with Sean. I don't know the internet. Sorry. Sean is now back. Sorry about that. The internet, while an amazing tool that expands people's horizons and opportunities to participate in the context of local media issues, tends to give the appearance of abundance of diversity in competition, which is you go online, there's a plethora of sources. Why does media ownership at the local level still matter? Well, study after study, as well as anecdotal evidence, shows that local newspapers and local broadcast stations are still the major providers of local news for communities. Frequently, what you read online is the website of your local broadcaster or your local newspaper, or it is sites that are sourcing from your local newspaper and broadcaster and are commenting on it, which is incredibly worthwhile, but it's different than investigative journalism. And so while we have this appearance of abundance, local media issues and media ownership remains incredibly important. The second challenge I think we are facing as we go into this next quadratic review is that many broadcasters are engaging in what we call covert consolidation. That is, broadcasters that could not merge because of media ownership rules in very small communities are instead entering into contractual arrangements where they say it's not ownership, but pretty much look exactly like it. You have stations that have completely consolidated their operations. They're jointly producing news. In some cases, they're actually simulcasting newscast. From a perspective of efficient use of the spectrum, consolidation and useful information for the community, we think that this is really a step backwards and something that we're going to be confronting this next review. I'd say that the last thing that is a real challenge for our community in the review is exhaustion. This happens every four years, and it is very difficult to keep up energy and focus. Additionally, Commissioner Cox, who will be speaking here later today, has been an amazing champion for this and has really rallied the troops, and his term is going to be ending later this year. I think it's incumbent upon everyone who cares about this issue to maintain their energy because it does still matter and it may matter even more than ever. I don't want to take up too much time. I will very, very briefly touch on the AT&T to mobile merger just to say that consolidation can affect us in all different sectors. This is potentially one of the largest mergers that we have on our doctor. We have two companies at the end of it if it was consummated, Verizon and AT&T, controlling a immense portion of the wireless market. The Department of Justice has filed suit that will be taking its course, the FCC as well as jurisdiction to review the merger, and I think we have a lot of different areas that we're going to remain vigilant on in terms of consolidation as we go forward in the next few months. Great. Thank you, Corrie. That's an impressive grand cover in about four minutes. I suspected if I was in your seat and don't work on these issues day-to-day, there will be some words on what Corrie has said and what Brandy will say in a moment. We'll list questions and I encourage you and I'll make sure we have time for questions. So please, store them away and don't be afraid to ask the meaning of a word or clarification on a particular point. Now, Brandy Doyle is in a slightly different part of the media policy world working for Prometheus on LPFM, which is a happier story at the moment. Now, nothing is ever completely joyous, but there is some good news there and some progress and some activity going on and I'll turn to Brandy to explain what that is. Thanks, Tom. The biggest policy news in the world of low-power FM community radio is the recent passage of the Local Community Radio Act. Can you raise your hand if you're familiar with the Local Community Radio Act? Most people, not everyone. So this is legislation recently passed that expands opportunities for low-power FM radio. And it was a long time coming. It was more than a 10-year bipartisan grassroots struggle to pass the Local Community Radio Act and I think there's probably lessons for this community that I'd be happy to chat with folks afterwards about the work that was done to pass the bill. There was a broad coalition of organizations from grassroots groups to beltway groups, civil rights organizations, emergency responders, religious groups, and we used a variety of tactics over a long time to push against mostly the commercial broadcasts lobby to pressure Congress into passing this legislation that releases, remove restrictions on the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, that allow them to license new low-power radio stations in more cities across the country. So previously these stations were limited mostly to rural areas and now they're going to be allowed in many more communities, medium and large cities for the first time ever. So this is a new opportunity for community radio stations and it's an opportunity that is available to public access and TV stations and I think that it's a great opportunity and the white paper that the New America Foundation put out talks about this as an opportunity for building community controlled infrastructure and I think it's a really good one. I think public access TV stations are great candidates for low-power radio stations. Low-power stations are small, non-commercial. They have to be locally owned. You can only own one and they're only licensed to nonprofit organizations, local governments, religious groups and they have restrictions. They're non-commercial. They have restrictions on underwriting and they're really the licenses themselves are provided at no cost by the FCC and the opportunity to apply for them is coming soon though we don't know exactly when. One of the other lessons from the Local Community Radio Act, people say everything's in implementation and implementation is ongoing right now. There's a couple of rulemaking procedures at the FCC that have to be completed to implement the bill before there's an opportunity to apply for new stations. So right now we're waiting on the FCC to complete implementation and they have said that the earliest they expect the opportunity to apply for new low-power stations to be next summer. That's an optimistic estimate. It could be sometime after that. But it's important for organizations who are interested in applying for low-power stations to start preparing now because when they do open an application window the filing window is, the last one they did was five days long so it's not a long window. You have to be prepared well in advance. There are a number of public access TV stations around the country that have, that already run low-power FM stations. Is there anybody in the room that works with the low-power FM radio station? Or full-power? Great. So yeah, I encourage you, if you're interested in this opportunity to also talk to your colleagues about how that's worked in their communities. And I'm happy to answer questions. I guess two quick notes for this community. Two things. One, I would encourage your organizations to look into applying for a station and thinking about how that might expand your operations and your community involvement and your community support. And two, whether or not you're interested in applying I would encourage you to think about how you can use the channel and the outlet that you already have to spread the word about this opportunity in your community to other organizations who might be interested. We have a limited amount of time to spread the word about this opportunity all over the country and it's kind of a one-time only opportunity to build community media infrastructure because the FM spectrum is crowded. We don't expect another opportunity of this size to come along again. We have one opportunity over a long time and when it passes it will pass. So we encourage everyone who has access to media infrastructure today to think about how they can use the tools they have, maybe even the meeting space that you have for other organizations to come in and host a community meeting to think about how your community could be served by a new radio station. Thank you. Thank you, Brandi. And so after the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from Brandi or to Ben, Ben, you're going to deal with some more, I suppose, complex and technical terms in what you'll be discussing. So have you identified for net neutrality, universal service reform, and potentially the rights of way? So maybe you don't feel you have to keep to my five minutes. But net neutrality, what does it mean? Where are we? And what does the future look like? Well, so we had a net neutrality order that was put out, I guess, a year ago or so, or over a year, I guess, December. It seems like a long time ago. And as many folks are probably aware, we fought for years and years and years for the FCC to move forward with fundamental protections to protect the free flow of information, to prevent companies from charging content providers for access. And we got an order finally in December. Unfortunately, the protections were rather weak on the wire line side for wired broadband. You know, we had some OK protections, but a lot of loopholes in there. And then on the mobile side, which they completely split them up separately, there were virtually no protections. In fact, companies can still continue to block access to certain applications and content, and there's really no recourse for consumers or protections. So the commission then sat on the order for a while. And finally, you know, basically was taking their time submitting it to the federal register and through the various processes. Meanwhile, in Congress, in the House, they passed a resolution of disapproval, basically revoking the rules and the FCC's authority over broadband. Finally, some time after that, the FCC finally submitted the rules for review by... So clarification, they passed the resolution of disapproval in the House. What does that mean? For the moment, it means nothing. It's a nice, grandstanding effort by the Republicans. There's another effort underway in the Senate right now, which a number of public interest groups are trying to stop. Obviously, the Senate has, with the Democrats and the majority, it's less likely, though it's still a significant effort by a lot of groups to try to prevent, particularly any Senate Democrats from going, basically advocating for the FCC to have no authority over broadband and be against net neutrality. So it's still a significant effort. And then after assuming it got through the Senate, it would need to be signed into law by the president, which would be highly unlikely at this point. So you have that process going on underway, and then the rules finally have passed OMB review. They were published a month ago. And now the fun part, which is the various court challenges that will happen as a result. So public interest groups filed in a couple of different district courts or appellate courts of various around the country, and Verizon sued as well and filed in the DC Circuit. There was a lottery, and the DC Circuit won. And the issue with the DC Circuit is it generally has a history of being rather anti-regulation, and they were the ones that struck down the BitTorrent ruling at the FCC, saying the FCC didn't provide adequate authority. They've generally been... They were also the Brand X. Don't go there. Don't go to Brand X. So phone is here in the Internet ether. So it will be a significant challenge for the FCC to defend its authority. And I won't go into all the details of Title I and Title II, but generally the authority that they're resting on for the open Internet rules is very uncertain at the moment. So there is a chance that the DC Circuit could overturn the rules and then we're left with no net neutrality rules as well as potentially questions around whether the FCC has any authority to regulate broadband at all. And those challenges have come both from Verizon and from public interest groups. So why the public interest groups? Public interest groups wanted to sort of intervene and raise the concern over the sort of difference between wire line and wireless. There's basically completely arbitrary distinctions made by the commission, and they did not provide adequate justification for creating basically two different rules for what essentially now is one Internet. And in fact, the chairman at the beginning of that process said that it's one Internet and then suddenly at the end you had completely different rules for whether you access the Internet via wire line service or via your mobile device. And so consumer and public interest groups have challenged that arbitrary decision by the commission to impose those different rules. That's net neutrality. So we've got through that. USF, which Universal Service Funds reformed which is incredibly complex and complicated. But basically, USF Fund, as most folks probably know, has been used primarily to subsidize phone service, to build out a phone service in rural areas. So there's been a lot of effort and discussion around transitioning that fund to fund broadband. As well as discussions around intercarrier compensation, which is basically the amount that each phone company has to pay to connect to another phone company's calls and if I call a rural company, if I try to call a rural customer my phone company pays the rural telephone provider a certain fee. And generally it's been used as a means for the rural telephone companies to subsidize their basically fitness as well as getting subsidies from the Universal Service Fund. And so the ICC put out an order at the beginning of this year. I'm not in an order, I'm an NPRM. And we've gone through several iterations and then finally the big telcos and the rural telcos came out with their own plan called the ABC Plan, which would basically completely re-transform the ICC intercarrier compensation pricing but also direct all of the money for a new Connect America Fund for broadband to the existing telephone companies that have been receiving subsidies. So as well as wanting to remove all sorts of public interest obligations on themselves. The chairman actually came out with a speech last week basically indicating that it seems to implement certain parts of the ABC Plan but not implement certain other parts. So essentially what it seems like what's going to happen is they're going to implement intercarrier compensation reform. So that will mean for the rural telephone companies most likely less money coming into them. As a result of that many of those companies have asked that the commission that they would be able to raise the subscriber line charge so there's a basic charge on phone service to make up for that lost revenue which is a big concern to a lot of public interest and consumer groups because most of these consumers of most wire line current sort of basic telephone service consumers are low income they're seniors and they really can't afford to have sort of a significant price increase and also there is just no evidence that the companies would actually need to raise that basic line charge with ICC reform or with the Connect America Fund. So we've been very much asking the commission not to sort of authorize sort of this across the board pass for all of these companies to raise prices for consumers on data that hasn't been proven out yet. We don't know what the financial structure is going to look like once the reform has taken place. The other issue with the Connect America Fund is because the commission sort of Title I, Title II authority is so weak and they're unsure about broadband they may take the easy pass and just give the money to the existing telephone companies because rather than trying to figure out whether they can give it to new entities they may sort of at least in the short term give it to the existing rural telephone companies to expand broadband access. Is that the high cost fund? Is that the high cost fund parallel? Yes. Thank you, Sean. And public interest groups are trying to sort of again make sure there's accountability. Also, we've been advocating a lot for an interconnection obligation so the broadband stimulus grants were required to provide interconnection. We think that that's a very basic minimal obligation that should be imposed on these companies that are receiving taxpayer dollars. So that's the Connect America fund. There's also reforms to Lifeline Linkup which is sort of the consumer side of USF which subsidizes telephone service it's like a $10 subsidy to consumers. So there's ongoing discussion around transitioning that or allowing consumers to actually also subsidize broadband as well as how many in each household should it be eligible so for example, Lifeline Linkup subsidizes mobile service a lot but if it's only the one adult in the household and they take the mobile phone with them then the rest of the family doesn't have mobile doesn't actually have telephone access and there's ongoing discussions whether it should be one per household or one per adult or various things. Unfortunately, it seems that the commission was rather quick to assert early on that in fact clarifying that under the current rules that households are only allowed to receive one benefit per household and unfortunately they impose that rather quickly and at the moment currently households are only eligible for one coupon for service. You have a service fund, it's not purposes may not be as core to your public access work but right of way Ben if you can give a quick overview of the big issue and then we'll pivot to Mitzi and Sean to talk about it from the perspective of a community TV station. So, sort of buried in the National Broadband Plan was this recommendation that the FCC should do a review of local and state rights of way policies do I need to explain rights of way actually I'd rather explain the rights of way policies but generally speaking so we had flagged this as sort of a really head scratcher as well as a potential for a real sort of dangerous road that the FCC would go down it's clear that the carriers and the cable companies and various other broadband providers have been pushing for this for a while so the FCC finally earlier this year put out a notice of inquiry on rights of way policy proposing a series of pretty aggressive questions around whether they should do sort of standardized practices and really framing in terms of the states and localities standing in the way of broadband deployment and access and it is just the notice of inquiry but it sort of sets the stage for a potential of notice of proposal rulemaking we filed along with public knowledge media access project and access Humpholt basically opposing the FCC intervening and sort of attempting to insert itself in authority where states and localities are the proper entity to be in charge and as of right now it's sort of just kind of sitting there but I think Mitzi can handle more of just push back on the idea itself. Great, thanks Ben, that's a tour de force so now we'll move to Mitzi and Sean Sean are you there? Aloha, yeah I'm still here. Fantastic, so Sean is in the dark ether we as you notice we've had some connectivity problems so we're not going to have we'll have him only on voice but he will come out of the ceiling. So I think we'll start with Sean and then Mitzi both of you come from peg stations or peg more generally and Sean do you want to give us your perspective as a from Access Humpholt I know that you are actually filed suit up in the Ninth Circuit. We were hoping that the open rules would be in the Ninth Circuit so perhaps if you could talk about the issues that you've heard today from your perspective and perhaps touch on the net neutrality to bring it home. I'm just imagining for folks in the room who haven't sort of looked at the broad scope a lot of ground has been covered so I think part of my message is to say take advantage of New America Foundation and all the resources around you. Obviously there's a lot of brain power there and some amazing folks in the room at Madco and so while you're I just want to encourage folks to take advantage of those opportunities and I heard Sasha remind us of the two key phrases out of the federal law which are localism and diversity and for Access folks we have to communicate across a lot of policy makers and non-policy makers in our work all the time so having really simple ways to talk about it I think is important to me and localism and diversity are two easy concepts that we clearly the community media clearly addresses the most directly compared to any other outlet that's available so the human rights framework the idea of really Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights is really helpful conceptually as well so when I was listening to the ownership part I'm thinking for us to remember our place across media you got satellite, broadcast cable and telecom really and each have grown up in a different kind of regulatory framework but we're all related in a sense and each area of media has a different jurisdiction that has a different role to play federal jurisdictions tribal, state, local and we tend to be very familiar with the local jurisdictions and the frustration of being preempted by state and federal but I think it's a constructive framework to think about engaging any one of those jurisdictions in a way to harmonize with the other jurisdictions so for example when you're talking to people in Congress you can be talking about how to make better use of local resources and the public investments that are being made at the state and local levels and I think what's in common across all of the media and all of the issues that have been presented is this idea that public benefits we really need to address mitigating harms and maximizing public benefits that derive from very essential public assets of rights of way and spectrum I mean if it wasn't for public ownership and maintenance of rights of way and public ownership and regulation of spectrum we wouldn't have a lot to hang our hat on but if you look at those two core assets that we have the rights of way and the spectrum and how those interests sort of underlie what happens with over the air with the satellite with broadcast on the ground with cable and telephone and to me it's been a very helpful way to just distill it down in very simple terms our community has an interest in the right of way we all pay to acquire and maintain that right of way we're the ones impacted by that tower site appearing in our neighborhood we may not have a lot to say about spectrum but we have a lot to say about right of way when you're talking to people at the federal level issues become more prominent but the essential ask I think stays the same so the essential ask that I think we need to keep in mind is one that the ACM public policy group tried to outline many years ago and to me it distills down to a very simple concept we're asking to set aside capacity spectrum channel bandwidth and put it under local control and with a mechanism that provides operating funding to make use of that capacity so whether it's satellite broadcast cable telecom broadband internet whatever it is we want capacity that's set aside under local control with a funding mechanism that makes it usable and accessible in local communities to address localism and diversity so that's my that's my two cents thanks your thank you um Mitzi you aren't in California you're from Montgomery County just up the street I came from California oh but I thought you were but I do work you do work here yes thank you for having me here I do want to actually thank most of the folks in this room for filing comments in the right of way proceeding at the FCC and I was remarking on how far we had come since many years ago there was a bill in congress and one of our partners supported one of the public interest partners supported statewide national franchising we really come a long way and it was very gratifying to see the comments that were filed by New America Foundation Free Press Public Knowledge Media and Democracy and Access Humboldt so let me let me sort of say I was looking at this and what Sean had asked me to do was I'll say a little bit about the taxes but to sort of sort of suggest on all of these issues what either the local benefit the local government or the public interest PEG interest is in these and in listening to this one of the ways to really I guess there's two points to take away from this is one is it's all about money and the two is in this town we're big on talk short on details and we don't have any way to deal with unintended consequences and that is why we end up in this kind of paralysis and strange bedfellows environment so in let me just start with the taxes and I guess it sort of plays in with the right of way too I think this is all about how do you fund these things and if you you can't raise taxes at the local level to fund local projects local community infrastructure, local media then you're dead in the water and you end up with a national model in which everything is the same for everyone so that's why these things matter what's important to realize too is that we're losing on the tax front and that's a big thing and in this environment everybody is all about well let's not have taxes let's lower taxes, let's do all those things but those fund those services so the one bill right now that we're really looking at is the bill it's got a bill in both the house and the senate version and it would prevent discriminatory cell phone taxes which sounds great but what that means is in a lot of local communities they have taxes that exist on wire on wireline telephones and they don't have a lot of taxes that exist that's careless in fact the federal government's got probably more on both of those than state and local governments and there's no bills getting rid of the federal taxes I might note what the new bills would do is it would say okay well you can't impose a discriminatory tax on a cell phone so if you wanted to say that cell phones should now pay the same in taxes as landline phones that would be prohibited but in most cases in people have seen people are moving to having only cell phones not landlines and in part because the FCC has not finished all these things they're talking about intercarrier compensation other things that essentially are the cost to not use your phone you can look at your phone and you'll see them that is sort of stuck there and so at the local government level and for the PEGWA we care about that is that that's a place where you can generate funding that funds all of these other vital programs that you're needing to pick up and local governments get doubly because at the same time the federal government is reducing the money that they're giving back to local communities and states are reducing back the money that you look at that are getting back to local communities and if you then say well you can't collect any fees or taxes on what happens in your local community then you're just trying to say well we're not going to fund any of this and the free model will only work so long the important thing about that bill is it's sponsored by a democrat out of California and it's got over 200 co-sponsors so if you look at that in comparison to what we're doing it's um that's the kind of big picture that we're up against on the in addition there is congress passed the internet tax freedom act which has got to get the winner for best name and what that bill does is it says okay for these ISPs who are out here use public property you cannot charge them taxes or fees period that is a moratorium that has been extended it will not sunset until 2014 and so what that means is that local governments can collect money franchise fees for cable providers they can provide money for peg but you cannot collect any fees for people who use those same companies who use the right of way to provide broadband services and in a lot of states you have a problem in which the incumbent telephone company was there at the time or before they became a state and got the right to use the right of way at a time when they were the only company and so they weren't paying anything and so now when you have people who come in who are selects competitors who are only serving certain parts of your community and you want to charge them or you want to charge the I like then you can't do it so again there's no money to fund these things unless you fundamentally address those on the specific issues that have come forward on the right of way the most likely what's going to happen on the FCC it was very interesting there were very few comments that people filed really looking at right of way at the wire line services that are in the ground that was very surprising to a lot of us who knows exactly what that means because we certainly had ones where out of the blue something else came up and there's something else called level 3 at the FCC and they're looking at that so that's something to watch what's more likely to happen is the FCC will come out and look at rules about tower siding and they'll probably focus on co-locations in part it's because they feel like it's something that they can do what they're not doing are things like the pole attachment order which sounds so sexy pole attachments but in fact if you're into expanding access pole attachments are the sexiest thing out there because the single biggest obstacle to expanding competitive broadband is you either have to go underground which can be expensive or you have to go on the poles and there's not enough room on the poles so the FCC created rules in which people want to get access to the poles they come and the chairman touts this thing it's all great great great and what does it say it says okay when you go and you ask for permission to get on the pole they have a certain amount of time that they have to respond back to you but there's this thing called make ready work you have to make that pole ready and in a lot of cases it means you got to put in a new pole because you need a taller pole there's no timeline to get that work done that's what the FCC has under reconsideration instead of focusing on that we're talking about towers in this filing I appreciate everybody who went and did we went we looked up some numbers there are something like 200,000 over 200,000 facilities that the industry uses there were complaints about 76 of them filed in that proceeding there are 39 I think it's 39,000 municipalities in the US there were complaints filed about 700 of them this in any sense where you only have complaints in which 99% of America is not having a problem does not seem to be where you should have the focus but that is in fact where the FCC is having is focused because it's easy because easy to come after local governments easy to come after public interest on the on the net neutrality I mean I have to say frankly thank goodness for net neutrality because if it wasn't for net neutrality we would have national franchising of cable people don't remember that when the COPE Act came out people wanted to talk about net neutrality and people remember that Senator Stevens has things about pipes it's a pipe kind of pipe John Stewart did a whole thing got people in the public excited about technology issues and keep your hands off my internet and those kinds of things and so the bill died because people weren't willing to make a deal so on the net neutrality now where at the local level on one hand we what we see is that it's you want to have networks that you open up because these are streets and roads and there's a lot of cost that goes in to both maintaining those and also having to put in those new facilities and so it would make sense to share but nobody's come up with a good way to say well how do I actually make sure that the person who the company that invested the money in building that infrastructure to everywhere versus the competitor that comes along and says I only want to buy what I need that there's some way to equalize that and at the local government level a lot of folks are using institutional networks INETS to provide services to schools and library places we can get broadband and for Montgomery County we use that for our peg channels we do that video stream we carry that over that we don't want to open up that network necessarily because when we built it we did not build it for commercial capacity so that becomes another issue and how you sort of married that but on the concept that people should share we have Verizon Verizon's got tons of conduit that they put in there they won't lease it out because they think okay we might need it later on on the universal service fund again you know for us what's amazing is it is difficult it is complicated but if you look at the number of years this is part of the problem we're so afraid of the federal level to make any decision because it might be wrong we might have imperfect information or it might have unintended consequences that nothing happens so here we are in 2011 and we have a fund which doesn't provide services for broadband and we have a plan that says if you're a household you have to pick you can either have low cost telephone or low cost broadband but we won't give you bull which is astounding in its stupidity so but that's kind of where we're at why because there's no money in the fund to do bull on the low power FM on that piece it is an interesting thing in some ways it comes at a terrible time because at the time that local governments have been really trying to stretch their budgets they have been doing costs to be able to partner with some of our local partners to either provide funding or to provide start up or to provide matching grants those kinds of things that is difficult the NOI on tower siting is relevant because in most of these cases unless that station already exists and you already have a transmitter tower you're going to have to figure out where to do that and instead of us spending time looking at ways that we can partner with industry to figure out where we need to have more towers what we could do to be rezoning we're spending time filing comments at the FCC to say that when you have a tower that has six things on it you shouldn't have a by right rule that says that you could put another six things on it that actually looking at whether that tower is rated to do it is a good thing so that's going to play in there and the last thing about the ownership it would say that beyond just the consumer impact that we care about because people call to up to us and complain all the time about things at a local level we have no power or authority to fix but the biggest problem for that is that as these companies consolidate it makes it harder to get a local deal that recognizes the things that are in the local community that are different from another place it makes it harder to do things where you can't show an absolute bottom line that can be reported on a quarterly basis and the last thing I would say is that even although it tends to come up as an issue for smaller markets it's a problem in larger markets too in the DC area there are four million people who live in that metro market and so the ability to get local news on four mainstream commercial channels and even and when you look at the budgets that are cut on the public television and the radio broadcasting partnerships are going to be the way that it has to happen but it's coming at a time when it's really hard to find partners at the local government level and haven't seen any models yet that show how our non-profit partners can really get into that but I think that there is a need, there is a support and I think talking about the localism and the ability to get out local information in a local area is probably the winning strategy there. Thank you, Mitzi. You covered pretty much everything. So... This is Sean. I just want to highlight one quick phrase that Mitzi brought up that I think is critical and that is community anchor institution. In terms of broadband deployment in terms of the concepts of information access that's becoming a very important concept that media, community media is already central to and needs to embrace as a frame community anchor institutions. Thank you, Sean. With that, I'll turn to Kress for some wrap up overview comments. Kress, you work at the media and democracy coalition and really cover, have to cover the breadth of what's been discussed here and I'm not sure if you have any reflections on what you've heard as it may be relevant to the audience. I think there are three top issues that are coming out in all of these. My position at Madcub Media and Democracy Coalition is the advocacy manager. So I spent a good amount of time trying to keep track of all of these things and also head up to the Hill and the FCC to help advocate for these policies and I'd like to joke that it's my business to be up in your business. I need to know what's going on and I think what we need to hear in this room are the top three things that we need to pull away from all of these issues. They're amazing. Thanks to our panelists because you really just brought it out in such a way that we could get through it. So the top three things that I'm really seeing in all of these issues are free and open access, affordability and diversity. So if we just go through the list very very quickly when we talk about net neutrality this is essentially your livelihood. For those of you that are actually thinking about broadcasting some of your materials online, if net neutrality doesn't exist on wireless for example then folks were trying to access your programming on their mobile devices whether they're using their phones, etc. may not be able to use it. That's an avenue that is being blocked specifically because the FCC is not really willing to extend those protections to wireless. So once again that's just about free and open access. When we talk about affordability that's things like USF. I personally cannot imagine not having a phone much less the internet at this point in time. So to say to millions of Americans across the nations that are having trouble affording these types of technologies is unbelievable. So we have to think of this as a consumer right. We have to think about these protections as consumer protections a way for folks to afford communicative technologies that are really just a part of our everyday lives. And of course diversity is the third thing that I just wanted to bring up and that comes into things like media ownership and the covert consolidation. I don't need to tell you about the great stuff that's happening in your local communities. You're doing this already so I'd be preaching to the choir. But we have to understand that if we're not covering the local media then that means we're basically giving up on what's happening in our communities. So with the covert consolidation I can only imagine if we're talking about two different markets that are receiving the same new simulcast. We don't know who's running for the mayor. I mean what you basically get with these type of simulcasts are really nice pieces on human interest about the dog that was found by a neighbor across the way and basically they're also throwing out stories about who got shot up the night before. I mean it's all very cutesy but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter. It doesn't get to what's happening in your community and what's important and how things go there. So just to help wrap things up again we're looking at free and open access. We believe that folks who are in the community movement need that access. I mean obviously everybody needs to be able to access the internet and receive anything that's on there that is lawful without any interference from telecommunications corporations. Affordability we all should be able to afford these telecommunication technologies phone internet it needs to happen and of course diversity we want to make sure that our local communities are being covered in such a way that reflects the diversity of the community and the people within it. So that's what I want to say. Thanks Chris. That's great. So we have about 12 minutes for questions and some final comments from the panellists who may want to comment on each other's points. We should have a mic going round Preston. So with the mic to come so people who are watching this live on the web and just to remind everyone this is on the record live and will be streamed for posterity and available to Google and WikiLeaks for as long as they exist. Questions anyone? Hello I'm Hab Haas Executive Director of Public Media Network in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Longtime Alliance Board Member for Ms. Doyle you alluded to the lessons learned in your 10-year process in the low power FM world having followed that and participated in it in a long time. Could you expand on maybe some of the key lessons and insights you got from that process and how it would translate to what the Alliance for Community Media is attempting to achieve with the CAP Act? Sure. I can think of a few things off the top of my head and then I'd be happy to talk with you more at length later. One lesson is just the 10-year part that it was a long effort that went over the efforts of a lot of people all around the country. There were several iterations of the bill that didn't go through and there was a lot of work in cultivating relationships with members of Congress over time and a lot of work. I think one of the key components of the success of the Radio Act was the back and forth between the grassroots effort and the Beltway effort so there was a lot of work being done on the grassroots level to work with people who wanted low power FM stations and people who had them and that's something that obviously the PEG community can build on is the great network that you have all around the country to share those stories and success stories with your members of Congress. And then there was a back and forth with Beltway groups as well and trying to get information about what was going on in Congress and where to put pressure when and so that back and forth process I think was really key for us. I also think that the coalition building, the finding partners in the community that maybe were not themselves affiliated with the stations but could see the value of the stations in their communities so we did a lot of communities to think about who were the grass tops leaders or who were the people that would be influential with their members of Congress and I know the next panel will talk more about the grassroots organizing parts of this type of work but I think that the long term relationship building and coalition building was really key and we kind of went back and forth between these long term relationship work and gathering stories and compelling narratives and putting pressure on in key moments where we just got on the phones and called people all day and we came out and protested in front of different stages of the campaign in front of the National Association of Broadcasters in front of the FCC in different places so I think I'll think about a couple more points to speak with you afterwards but I think that the people outside of your regular networks to find partners I mean I think for us we worked a lot with religious organizations we worked with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops we worked with the Christian Coalition at moments we worked with emergency responders and we found that there was something across all of these groups that they cared about local media and they cared about having media access and so we built strong partnerships with people that were you know maybe outside of our networks at the beginning of this campaign that by the end we had really I think that that sense of broad support was really helpful in convincing members of Congress that this was worth fighting for so. For those of us who work in the media, technology and public interest communities we're not sprinters we have to be marathoners it's maybe a sad truth that anything worth doing will not be done quickly in this town in particular basically all of the issues that the panelists today have highlighted were years and years of effort and I highlight that because I think for those of us who work on these projects stamina is so important it is going to be a long haul and it's easy to get dejected and demoralized but there are some amazing victories that have been won in the process of issues teed up at this table and I hope hopefully some victories in the process right now so I just say that not as a pep talk but it's the reality of how we work in this community and we've done an amazing job I think. If I may I just want to touch on what you guys were talking about as advocacy manager when you're dealing with folks on the hill you have to realize that I can only do my job we can only do our jobs if you are making noise in your community so just as Cori mentioned it's basically come to the point where if you can get in touch with your congressman if you can influence what's happening in your area locally that's when things really start to happen without hearing from their constituents congressman senators they tend to do what is easy meaning there's no noise about it or number two what corporations and large telecommunication companies are telling them to do so this is one place where I'm very excited for the next panel you'll hear more about the communities for you to do some grassroots organizing in such a way that won't make noise because a congressman can easily say hey I can't do it my constituents don't want me to do it or vice versa so this is a place where the power is definitely in your hands. I just want to follow up on that point really quick that's such an important point because there are moments in this campaign when even people who were lobbyists in DC public interest advocates who had good relationships with congressional power couldn't get questions answered or information about what was going on with the legislation that a constituent phone call could get I mean the constituent call is so valuable and we would have you know we had anonymous holds in the senate blocking the legislation for a long time and we really pushed to break those holds and a lot of times there was nothing that we could do inside the Beltway that constituents often could do in terms of really putting pressure and that's an important lesson I think last thing I wanted to add is that if you can think about in terms of the long haul if you can think about ways to make the fight itself an organizing opportunity so that even if you don't win this year or next year you can think about how can we organize around this issue in a way that's going to strengthen our station or that's going to strengthen our media center or support in our community so that we're not burning out through that process but that we're building up our community we're building up community support and we're building those relationships and coalitions that we can use in other ways towards a bigger victory. Good time for one more question the gentleman of the front Hi, thanks Jonathan make communications daily question for any of the panelists who want to take it and Sean on Skype what do each of you and your organizations hope to get from the quadrennial media ownership review since that's something that came up and then for some of those folks who are saying that maybe some members of congress and the FCC don't get in on some local telecom issues how are you hoping to change that as well? Thanks I'll start because I've thought a lot about what we want to get out of the quadrennial media ownership review I think number one is that coming out of our court case which we won in July is there is a very very powerful mandate from the court instructing the FCC to pay attention to issues of diversity the court found that the FCC really had not done its job in adopting meaningful policies that would diminish the deficiency and ownership of broadcast stations by people of color and women and I think that very powerful mandate in hand we can go forward and do some really good work at the FCC which has sadly I think not been taken as seriously and as forcefully as it should have in the past the second really is the covert consolidation issue you know it is not enough that we have to deal with the problems of actual consolidation now we have to deal with it on a sort of more secret level that is incredibly frustrating but I think it's incumbent on the FCC to recognize this phenomenon and to put some standards in place for what are helpful interactions and collaborations if you want to share a news helicopter because an individual station can't afford it on its own that's fine but when you take two stations with two separate news rooms you move them in together you lay off the journalist for one station and you're basically putting duplicate news on the air that's not useful to the community it's not a very efficient use of the spectrum and that could be used for other better purposes and I think that those are really going to be the signature issues moving forward and we're hoping the FCC will give it the attention that it needs and this is Sean I would just add that we look for proceedings like that review to inform the FCC's process of developing appropriate public interest obligations to address the need for localism and diversity I would just add and it may not be something I guess what we would ask is how we can support our public interest partners on this it is the idea in that review and whether it can fit in there but the public interest obligations of broadcasters to somehow get away from a lot of broadcasters provide weather sports and traffic and there is more to local community information than weather sports and traffic people want that information and the recent Pew studies shows that but there should be a way beyond that as to the question of how to get members engaged on these issues I think that the simplest way to do it is you have to just boil it down into the things that they know and understand I can understand what it means to say should I make it easier to put up a tower in a community without getting the community's review that's not that hard to understand is there a funding source for this that's not that hard to understand is there something other than the corporation which is owned in a foreign state if not a foreign country that has some ability to access infrastructure in the community and get information out is there a way for parents to use the computers at elementary schools to access the internet it's frankly what's important to do is leave the lawyers and let them write the briefs and the filings but don't let them write your handouts and seriously I mean people talk about it but really Thanksgiving is around the corner and as you're sitting there you find a way to make whatever it is you're talking about in some understandable chunk and that's the same thing that needs to happen with the member of Congress and the one piece that I would add to this and I hope that the next panel is going to focus on is the one thing I think that distinguishes the CAP Act from the low power FM is the CAP Act is much more amenable to adding to another bill this Congress, maybe the next Congress they're not particularly interested in doing anything it seems I guess there's a shameless about it about how much money we spend to actually do nothing but that said the CAP Act is revenue neutral it's amenable to adding to a bill so I hope that that's going to be as part of the next panel and the conversation with that last comment from Mitzi I call this session to a close put your hands together and thank all the panelists for excellent and very performing discussion thank you