country care anymore. it if we do care, i think he's got a point. if we don't care, we loved you, but good-bye. none of us are entitled to sort of permanence. we have to be relevant to the modern age. >> i don't know how many of you come from here in washington or new york. i think localism means less there than it does in these cities, big metropolitan areas. i will tell you being from rural oregon is absolutely vital. it is the glue that brings communities together. it in all the fly-over of america a very important value. if it went away, it's not going to go away because every member of congress values it. >> you say like the guns debate, if you live rural, take my gun out of my hands. take my localism out of my dead hands? >> if you're in wichita, kansas, and you want to know what the weather is, it's vital to your crops.

when's the tornado coming, what's the weather, these are things that people count on in a daily way. you may not feel that in washington, but i'll you, 9/11 or when there's an earthquake in washington, d.c., the one thing that kept working and the one thing everyone counted on, it wasn't broadband. it was broadcasting. >> i hate to jump in. but missing a point. i would agree with everything gordon just said. localism has that value. that's not the question. the question is does it rise to the level that the government should demand other entities subsidize that model and should it require that the government create legally forceable preferences for that value as protected by law? not whether it's -- we have a lot -- i think "mad men" is super, supervaluable. i don't want to miss it on sunday night. but it doesn't necessarily mean that i would lead to the government making that the central commitment of its regulatory machine. >> if the government wants to

get rid of all the regulations related to broadcasting, most of them are harmful to our costs. a few of them, a few of them, like must carry, are beneficial to small stations. i mean, so there's a trade-off here. but if the effort is to get rid of a few things that benefit broadcasters and leave us with all the other cost impositions, then i'd say -- >> i'd join you in that. i'd take them all away. i tried to. >> michael -- >> didn't i, preston? >> your industry right now is engaged, just getting started in a rather strong litigation front because you're concerned about the fcc's open internet border and the possibility of title ii regulation. you want to speak to that? >> can i say something about that? as a member of congress, i did not vote for net neutrality. but the best thing about net

neutrality is it put michael in the bull's-eye in the congress and not me. >> happy to do that for you. >> don't worry, you'll be back there soon enough. >> first of all, i want to go back and commend gary the first one to address this and he's totally right. i can get in the weeds on this issue. but let me start from a high level point that's really important. since the internet was invented in this country, the administration at the time, clinton administration, vice president gore, ira magaziner. i can speak of many people who are heroic in creating the original foundation of what government and public policy would look at this new thing called the internet. >> including michael powell, by the way. >> including me at the fcc. and there was a recognition of some amazing things. in essence the national ethos was let entrepreneurs,

innovators and engineers and everyday people determine the growth, path and evolution of this phenomenal infrastructure and let's not adopt a model of a central regulator who is a set of attorneys and bureaucrats acting not from the bottom up as the internet works but from the top down as we try to do in the history of the phone system. that was a major national commitment, and it has been the ethos that has governed the policy of the united states for the last 20 years. written and enshrined in the statute itself. it is the national policy of the united states for the internet to grow unfettered by state and federal regulation, quote, unquote. for 20 years we have watched this country produce some of the greatest wealth generating innovating companies in the history of the world. there would be no google, there would be no facebook, there

would be no amazon, there would be new ebay, no snapchat without this policy. this policy attracted $230 billion of investment in one industry over a decade. the technology that deployed faster than any detechnology in the history of the world under that. secondly we as leaders wandered around the world and demanded that other governments do the same. we demanded that governments that have much more evil intentions toward the internet, russia, china, arabian countries. no, we will not stand for regulating the internet like the telephone system so you can censor, so you can try to extract unnecessary value. we were the champions of that. on this decision of net neutrality, this government switched that longstanding policy presumption. we've now gone from an inextra structure principally directed by markets and innovators and people to one that has lawyer, regulators and lobbyists through

an adversarial process determining every future business evolution of the network. and i don't know why anybody believes that that's a virtuous moment in time, and i don't know how we'll have the moral authority to sit at the international telecommunications union a year from now and tell the russians you shouldn't regulate the internet like a telephone infrastructure. that's the switch, that's what title ii means. title ii is the most powerful source of authority that the fcc has available to it bar none. it is now a central and powerfully armed regulator. and it has created a process of complaint that allows any company to collaterally attack a business decision, to allow anybody who is unhappy with any aspect of the market to run to the commission. and we'll all sit there for the year on average it takes for them to make a decision on anything waiting to decide whether the cool innovation we

came up with we can even deploy. the genius was innovation without permission. and we now made permission a prerequisite to innovation. i think it's a tragic choice that the country will deeply regret. >> powell for president! >> why don't you tell us how you really feel. >> i want to see youtube with that clip as much as the john oliver clip got. >> we're here in 2015. suppose, gary, it's 2020, five years from now. and we're talking about the future of television. what's the headline? >> the headline is lots of choice, lots of great things. but i really believe that it depends upon like is the bird alive or is the bird dead and the wise man has to be tricked by the kids. the bird's in the kid's hands and he'll kill the bird if he

says it's alive and let it go if he says it's dead and the wise man will be wrong. whether broadcasting is at the stable depends upon their ability to go along with this auction rather than just try and delay it. that's for broadcasting. cable, i think they have more options simply as a broadband provider, they've been very well situated. other services that have come along, whether wifi or powerline or a dish stock went up today because they started talking about providing broadband from satellite, which is a nice thing. so there's a lot of choices and alternatives out there that are healthy. but in terms of what the device will look like, there's some natural progression paths but there's also things that surprises, as really clever companies do some amazing things. >> senator, maybe the answer for you would be a smaller but and more compacted but maybe stronger broadcast industry? >> i think the headline 2020 is

that gary's book will be in its tenth printing. the n.a.b. chief will have resigned or retired. but in all seriousness, i believe the future of broadcasting will be very bright because atfs 3.0, you all will have gotten your work done and we'll have gotten it implemented. and localism free and local live, large will be available for all americans. >> michael? >> well, if you're looking for headlines, and he's are headlines, these are long headlines. >> that's okay. >> goaden age -- golden age of telephone vision goes platinum. i think we live in the golden age of television. how much more can it be, it will be so omnipresent, it will come out of your pores. it is going to be a stunning period for consumption.

and cable trials holographic television. >> that's great. >> at least you didn't say smell-a-vision. >> all right. just the final question, just in a few words, michael, what do you think about the future of television? >> it's bright. but it's not -- the first thing we could do is think beyond television. you know, i think another headline will be we will increasingly begin to understand that it is a form of human content and entertainment and that it's not fixated around one central device or room or experience, and that we will have transformed into a much broader, richer, kind of experience with many more opportunities and many more companies and players who are in the ecosystem. and i think that's superexciting. challenge is challenge, but it's

also opportunity and who wouldn't want to be in this business? >> senator? >> live local on every platform available at all times. >> gary? >> well, i realize when you say television, i always hear television displays. and sometimes i think you mean television content. or do you mean the ecosystem of television? i think no matter what you mean and to me television is just one of the many great technologies that will totally transform the human experience. the truth is the problems we're dealing with today in society whether it be health care or agriculture production or food or clean water will be resolved by technology. the internet will bring sensing devices and things like that. and part of that is the type of display you have and the content you get. it will raise all of us up. >> i'll add my own words of thanks to everybody in this audience for what you contributed to the current standard and you're now contributing to what will be a great new era in the future of

television. thank you, and let's thank this wonderful panel. coming up at 8:00 p.m., an interview with atomic heritage founder cynthia kelly. then at 8:15 benjamin bederson recalls the era of secrecy and his own work developing the bomb's switching. all of that is tonight on american history tv on c-span3. next radio talk show hosts

and xeexecutives talk about the future of radio and the changing landscape of political talk shows. talkers magazine hosted the event. part of the 25th anniversary conference. >> this is a great panel and this is the big picture. this is going to go in all different wild ways. we'll do it like a tv show, real fast, no long answers, short sound bite. a man who knows how to do sound bites, we'll start with you real quick. let me first say alan combs, holland cook, one of the smartest men i've ever met. talk about the introduction. >> you should get out more. >> he's a consultant. karen hunter. i once did a radio show as her co-host on wwrl in new york, and she taught me how to rap on the air. it was fun. chris olivero, talk about smart.

he worked his way up from being an intern to one of the most important executives in all of radio. he's the evp of programming at cbs radio. and who is knnew to a lot of yo from the "boston herald." they're doing something i've been talking about for years and i have the honor of having them actually asked me for my advice and they take it. they put a radio station on a newspaper platform. the newspaper is the other stick. if the stick owners can't give you a place to do radio, what better place to do news talk or sports radio than a big metropolitan newspaper website and platform. they're doing it and it's remarkable. joe has to be here. wabc new york. the local program director is sort of like the forgotten

person in our industry. the program director of wabc. there have been times in my career that i've sat with the program director of wabc. i remember rick sklar and you shook in your boots being in the presence of the program director of wabc. a long heritage there. i want to find out what's going on in that job. and julie tal lbot who is the bt marketing person i ever met in this business. i met her when she was about 19 years old. >> i'm 21 now. >> she's the president of premier networks. i think we've covered everybody on the panel. alan combs, sound bite. what's the state of this right/left political stuff that we keep coming back to it. it seems to be the mainstay of news talk, debate, partisan politics, yet we always talk about how it's dead. you're right in the heart of it.

what's the state of it. >> you wanted a short answer. it's a great question because it's so much of what radio has been for such a long time. i thought it was interesting what mr. dicky said because there's so much more that you talk about at a cocktail party than with your friends at the water fountain that radio can and should be. there's so much more that radio is becoming. as the paradigm changes, we are doing a lot better with much more information coming in. we have much more opportunity to talk about so many different things on so many different platforms. i don't thing the left/right thing is the future of talk even though i'm on the left. but i do so much more than that. any radio show that just does politics or just talks about left versus right i think is missing a great opportunity to get a much broader audience.

>> or perhaps politics is so much more than left versus right. tom hartman and i had a wonderful conversation two weeks ago on my podcast, then i followed it up with mark levine. the two of you have more in common than not in common. yet people would categorize you as one's left, one's right. it's like sports used to be xs and os. you don't hear that any more. left/right is xs and os. some of your major product is steeped in the controversy of toxic radio, left versus right, boycotts. what's your take? >> listen to the shows. we have absolutely been diversifying in the content. politics is an important issue but so are the other current events that are happening. i believe that we've taken a much broader approach and we're certainly doing a lot of testing with a lot of other programming.

>> thank you, julie. holland, i have met some of the most fantastic people in this business who are friends and clients of yours. local radio owners. they do exist. meet so and so. i meet the person. i own a station in so and so place. i'm out there selling spots to the car dealers. you have your -- and they're such characters. they're characters, they're the salt of the earth, they're bright. and i love them because i was an owner of a local radio station. i just love the smell of the turntables and the in the newsroom. >> the sound of the teletype. >> the sound of the teletype. >> any more dated references? >> you remember what radio stations smelled like, don't you? bring back that -- they should artificial have that smell, like artificial new car smell.

>> what's the state of local radio ownership? >> there is a curiosity about a hunger for and a frustration about executing more local programming for all the reasons everybody who has spoken this morning has said and what we'll hear undoubtedly this afternoon, i'm asked a lot about can we do local programming. and i want to answer the who, what and where of that. i'm going to make a couple of people blush here. harry hurley in atlantic city, the morning mayor, if you can find somebody who knows a market, who lives and breathes and breaks news and is wired in and has the ultimate roll o dex that is gold, but where do you find them since consolidation and collaboration clobbered the farm team? it used to be a buyer's market.

now it's a seller's market. if you can't find or become that harry hurley, morning mayor, mr. name of market character, the station i work with in boston, wrko, has a couple of shows on the air whose business model should be instructive to you. hower carr is here, barry armstrong is not. both of these stations are heard on wrko, and about a dozen more stations around new england. and i thought that the unplowed ground in syndication is bigger than local, smaller than national. are you potentially a statewide footprint? new england as a footprint is about the size maybe of california. can your show go wide enough where everybody has the same accent and embraces the same interests? i think that that's the opportunity. i work with some of the state networks. the problem with state networks

they're giving stations what they don't want and asking more of the stations than the stations are willing to give. they should start doing shows about the state. the other thing that the station owners are concerned about, regardless of market size, is digital. we've been hearing this all morning. >> what's that? >> tremendous pressure from the home office for digital revenue. what the heck is it? i'll speak about this in the iowa broadcasters meeting the week after next. what the heck is digital. if you try to call any of your friends this weekend you're going to get voice mail because they just dumped "orange is the new black" season three. this is how people choose to consume. and if we do programming that is into the microphone, out the tower, into the ether and gone, one off, we're leaving money on the table. we've got to get better about using that thing in the pocket we used to call a phone as the dvr of radio. >> thank you, holland.

>> chris olivero, how are things at cbs? >> we'll, i've been here all morning, but last time i left it was good. do you know something i don't know? >> no, no. cbs -- >> right, tony? i don't know. things are good. i mean, we do invest a lot in live and local programming. you heard mike francesca speak about that today. if you were to put his station on today, fan, it's 24 hours seven days a week live and local. wins in this town is still that way, 880 is still that way. that model is not gone. is it more expensive? yes. is it difficult to find the talent to staff it 24 hours a day? yes. but is the payoff bigger? yes. you spend money the make money. >> so there's that awareness? >> yeah. >> another question for you since you're sitting in a situation where you're at a company that's multiplatform, has a huge investment in the stick but also has an investment in digital.

personally, is the stick still a good servement? is there going to be am and fm radio in ten years? >> it's also a question about what you pay for the stick. the stick is a business equation. what did you pay for the stick and what return can you get on that? if you talk to heritage broadcasters who bought that stick decades ago, 40 years ago, that's a very complicated conversation to say if it's still worth it or not. but will it still be around? yes. if you go to detroit and you speak to the automotive industry, the makers of cars, they have no plans to get rid of the am/fm radio experience in the car. will they add to it? of course. we all know about the dashboard. but that's not at the expense of taking away am and fm. so people who make the cars are telling us it's not going anywhere, i don't know why we wouldn't believe them. >> cameron hunter. you're on satellite radio, now

you've been on terrestrial radio. she's also a publisher and a pulitzer prize winning writer. an absolutely brilliant woman. >> thank you. >> you've been with sirius now -- why are you smiling with me? >> i agree. >> when you've done a show with somebody and she taught you how to rap, you can be familiar. >> we did more than that, michael. but it's a family audience. no, i'm joking. >> karen, what's your view of satellite radio? we haven't had much conversation about it today yet and you're in the thick of it. >> i absolutely love it. while i agree am and fm aren't going anywhere, what satellite has done is provide a platform for people who broaden -- when we talk about diversity, really bring different people into the mix. most of us have satellite radio automatically in our cars, when we get done whether you're renting, leasing or buying. from my standpoint i was here in new york doing a morning show

and now i'm reaching people calling from the bahamas and canada. i don't know if that's legal, but they're calling in anyway. i don't know how they're getting a signal. but i'm talking to people literally across the country. and it is breathtaking every day to come in and know that your voice is reaching that far. >> you are on a channel that is basically designated as urban african-american. i would imagine, not being african-american, i'm not in those shoes, but as an observer, i wonder about this. is it difficult to find the boundaries in terms of general conversation of where being an african-american begins and ends and when it becomes generalism? >> i somehow knew i was going to get the black question. >> i wonder why? >> let me get that. >> no, please, please, please. i think you can probably answer it better. actually i'm on two channels. i'm on sirius xm urban view and on a new channel that was the brain child of pete dominic, i'm doing a live show on mondays.

they repeat the urban show on insight, and i'm starting to do a live show on insight. a completely different audience, but i don't change anything. you know, i published kris jenner's book. and i've had quite a bit of time with these reality people. i realize that the world has changed dramatically and every day i wake up and say, at some point these 15 minutes are going to be up and they just don't seem to be. what i've come to the conclusion is people are fascinated by people. if i can be interested every single day just being myself, it doesn't matter what my race is. and quite frankly being on urban view is funny. yesterday we had tom hartman on and talking about the tpp. a caller said you should make sure this goes out to the urban community. my call screener said you do know this is urban view. >> the urban community needs to know this. >> okay. but it's just interesting to me that i don't necessarily draw those boundaries and lines. that's why i think we have a

very difbers audience of a whole lot of people. i do hang up on a lot of people. could be broader if i didn't. >> julie, i'll ask you the woman question since you are the reigning woman of the year. people ask me all the time how come there aren't more women on the heavy hundred. don't kill the messenger. why. >> -- why aren't there more women in talk radio. >> i've had a lot of conversations even today with women in the industry. i think the most important thing is people ask, how do i become that big success? and the response that i gave today and i'm kind of looking around for some of those folks that we were talking with, we said who has defined success? if you've got a great show and you are making money and there

are options for distribution, whether it is lots of them, lots of digital outlets including an i heart media, there's a different definition of success. be in charge of your own life. and if there are limited times on air right now, look at it a different way. we can do this. >> thank you. joe, you're in the newspaper business. you're as realistic a reporter, editor, i mean, lou grant. you got it in your blood like i got the smell of turntables. >> they say i'm a dinosaur. >> you're no dinosaur. you're a visionary and you're part of the future. you work at a daily newspaper that has innovation in its ink. and you're in the radio business now. it's two years you're in the radio business on this boston herald radio. share with this radio business audience what you've learned. >> well, it's amazing, i guess

to summarize it, radio has been a shot of adrenaline to our news organization, which has been traditionally a newspaper. we have obviously a website we do video. but it has enhanced our journalism, expanded our reach. and we're seeing sort of the very best of radio, the basics that you know about, the immediacy of radio, when breaking news happens, realtime, that's really so valuable to us in terms of reporting things now. newsmakers, public figures, the governor, the mayor, athletes, celebrity, they might be reluctant to call it print reporter and have that person put it through a filter and decide which quotes they'll use and which quotes they won't use. but now they come on herald radio and they can be heard in full context. but the key thing is, and i'll be very brief, is it's not a radio station in isolation. it is integrated fully with everything else that we do in our newsroom. so we break news on the radio,

and then we break it simultaneously on the web. and video embedded and sound that's embedded on the web that's sent out on social media and then in print the next day we follow up oftentimes with the story, advancing the story that we had broken on the radio. actually today on the front page we have a rand paul interview saying don't go after my wife the way that you went after marco rubio's wife. that story broke on herald radio. the only down side we've seen, michael, is it's hard to find photos to use at the paper of people not wearing headphones. so we're doing a lot of shooting in the studio. but as a news coverage, news breaking vehicle and as a way to expand our audience, it's been incredible. >> are the powers that be there happy you did it? >> oh, absolutely. i think we're getting great recognition nationally. we were just named as a final is for innovator of the your for this integrative programming. i remember