Article on
Broadcast Deregulation
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THE PUBLIC INTEREST, CONVENIENCE, OR NECESSITY: A DEAD STANDARD IN THE
ERA OF BROADCAST DEREGULATION?
PACE LAW REVIEW
Vol. 10 No. 3 Page 661
Citation: 10 Pace L. Rev.
661 (1990)
Pace University School of
Law
Summer, 1990
by Marc Sophos
Copyright © 1990 by the
Pace Law Review; Marc Sophos
This is a lengthy work on the
subject of broadcast deregulation, its excesses, and its effects. Although it was
published in 1990, its relevance is even greater today than it was then: almost every
week, one can read about new mega-mergers that create vast media conglomerates, resulting
in an alarming degree of ownership concentration in the electronic mass media.
The
article is in pdf format. You must have the free
Adobe Reader software to open it.
To get a general sense of what the piece
is about, expand the bookmarks in the document and
read the Introduction and Conclusion first.
Comments from prominent individuals about this article:
Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York (11/7/90):
You point out well
the great lengths to which Reagan Administration regulators have often gone to carry out
their laissez-faire ideology, and the analytic contortions they have performed to get
there. To our great cost, the scandals over the savings and loan bailout and the Federal
nuclear weapons plant cleanups remind us that reasonable regulation serves essential
social purposes. It protects society from the tremendous damage to our human, fiscal and
environmental health that laissez-faire would otherwise impose on us.
Your work is a useful part of the antidote we need to the
deregulatory excesses of the 1980s.
Ervin S. Duggan, FCC Commissioner (10/29/90):
Unfortunately, so much has happened to erode the public interest
standard that its future is uncertain. I intend, however, to do what I can to rehabilitate
that standard in a form that makes sense in an environment of "light-handed"
regulation. As I contemplate how to do that, your article will be most helpful for its
historical content and its strong statement of the rationale for the public-interest
standard.
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