threats, ve in to when you give in to threats of violence, you basically allow the threats, violent agitators successful even before they land one punch. i think that's a very dangerous precedent to set when you prevent a speaker from speaking just because of the threats of violence. >> and hillary clinton talks about the 2016 presidential election and her upcoming book. >> you may think you know what happened and you may be right to a certain extent based on what you've perceived and how you process it. but i'm going to tell you how i saw it and what i felt and what thought, because you cannot make up what happened.

>> we have a supreme court justice say he didn't want to get any radio cases. this seems very off-putting but it turns out that the way we

allocate radio spectrum, how we make resources available for the wireless world we're in to today is fascinating. and there's a political structure that was crafted in the 1927 radio acted everything is changing to wireless. but we have a lot of problems still with some of the very igid traditional old-fashioned into place in previous generations were trying to break away. there's been a pattern of liberalization that's been extremely successful but we have a long way to go and so into place in me forth.

previous generations were these radio signals can still travel. of course they can be used for communications. and radio transmit, radio receive. and we put stuff together all of a sudden you're in the wireless world that kids grow up with. they think that's just part of society to pull out the phone nd text or snap.

the first station in pittsburgh november 2nd 1920 prod casting election returns. the political element. tremendously popular within two years 500 stations broadcasting across america. now became contentious to use radio waves. we have had the science since 1985 but we hadn't had the innovation, the business model to create actual conflicts over broadcasters spude a lot of transmit power receivers with their programming.

so the new age of wireless we had to come up with new rules and we had essentially common law first come first serve. if you had radio station transmitting with authorization which was proforma from the department of commerce you got to be there and continue until somebody else came along that you might want to share with ow you might want to sell to but there were rules in place. that actually created a political kickback on the one side the first station which became commercially successful didn't want new entry. they didn't want that kind of liberal policy to allow new band withsdz to be utilized. on the other side you would policy makers that wanted some control over this powerful new medium of expression. they wanted licensed broadcasters. so those interests came together and created the 1927 radio act. that act put a political process into place and you've often had this exact same

coalition with powerful incumbent business interests getting together with policy makers to say that, well, this is going to be the public interest. there are going to be licenses cavered in fact, it has been called that quite regularly by regulators. and, that put into place things like the equal time rule that goes back to 1927 and the radio act. and even though things like the full-time role did not work in the sense that they actually

suppressed coverage of political candidates and debates. a fascinating aspect of presidential television debates. those debates could not happen until we deregulated the equal time i'll and made it possible for top candidates to get on the stage without 30 or 40 other minor party candidates there. even though these rules did not work well to produce the public interest outcome, they did work well for the interests of the political spectrum. brian: when did you start the book? [laughter] tom: people ask about that.

i say i have been writing this book since i was 5-years-old and it has been a career looking at how the economics and regulation work together in this space. i literally started on these issues in the late 1980's. i served at the federal communications commission in the early 1990's, and i have written many academic articles since. i started seriously writing this book about four years ago. brian: where is your home and what do you do other than write this book? tom: i grew up in los angeles, and i went to ucla. i taught at the university of california, davis. i moved to the east coast and ended up at george mason university and northern virginia, and then three years ago, i moved down to south carolina. i teach at clemson university. go tigers. we are now in a different part of the world. certainly different from the washington, d.c. area, where we spent the last 15 years. certainly different than california. it is an academic institution. very good economics department, so i teach economics to undergraduate and graduate students alike. brian: what kind of things in our daily lives uses the spectrum?

does the iphone or any phone use the spectrum? tom: absolutely. it is routine now, a social amenity for kids growing up. they use computers that are internet connected through wireless, they use phones that are in networks or locally connected to broadband networks. in a general sense, even our fixed or wired broadband systems are part of the radio spectrum ecosystem. spectrum in a tube. the high-capacity lines that distribute to most homes, broadband services to maybe a cable operator or telephone company, that is spectrum in a tube, and that is regulated some have the same, usually by the same agency in the united states and most other countries. brian: a lot of cars today have the pushbutton opening to the door.

garages have push a button, you know, far away from it. spectrum use? tom: absolutely. baby monitors, monitors and hospitals, sensing devices. there is a whole ecosystem now developing for what they call m to m, machine to machine to machine communications. in one vending machines call up distribution centers to say what they are out of. they need more granola bars and fewer m&ms, or vice versa. when you have a car that is stolen, there might be a locator that uses a wireless communicator. when you have something like onstar, a crash and a car, that makes it an automatic phone call. those are m to m devices where people are not making calls anymore periodically, they make calls when using cell phones. audio, video, and we still have

over the air broadcasting for television. that is largely in terms of the consumer end of things, shifted to cable, satellite, and over the top broadband distribution and cell phone reception for video, but we still allocate a very large swath of radio spectrum for essentially a 1939 technology. that is when tv started in terms of the regulators, putting aside spectrum. brian: i wanted to talk politics because you delve into this in your book, starting about page 139. you can pick up and go from there. a young new dealer emerged as a key defender of the agency. texas congressman lyndon b. johnson intervened with has speaker sam rayburn to support the commission and quash the budget cuts. what is the rest of the story? [laughter] tom: this is one of those, you

know, nifty tidbits you get from this political history of spectrum allocation. it turns out that there is a very powerful georgia southern democrat eugene cox in the early 1940's. extremely powerful within the house. he, at the same time he was a congressman, was actually doing business as a lawyer, which he was. with radio stations getting renewals. license renewals. he was close to the line on what was ethical. the fcc at the time was headed by a man who in history has become rather well known. james fly. he later became head of the american civil liberties union. he stood up for civil liberties

and against wiretapping. while he was fcc chair. he is very renowned in any contemporary versions. he is the best fcc chairman in history for what he stood up and did. one of the things he stood up to was this powerbroker in the house. congressman cox. in fact, when it became known, reported in the press, that there had been this ethically dubious action by the congressman, flye did not back down. he scheduled that station for a hearing. now that, in regulatory, in the clinical spectrum, that is a very hostile thing for an agency to do because now this station has to spend money for lawyers, they might lose a license. it generally is not going to happen that way but they still have a very significant expense and maybe some risk. so in any event, this congressman cox, he just went ballistic. he engineered a number of bills to be introduced and budget cuts

to slash the fcc budget. this became quite something. a row challenge to the agency by the incumbent policy maker. a little-known congressman from texas figured it out an opportunity and he ran in the background in under the radar to help salvage the fcc. now, the thing that makes this story rather sensational and completely ironic is that as good a reputation as he had and has standing up for ethical conduct at the agency, this relationship between johnson and the fcc would save the fcc and led to johnson having the clout to engineer radio, later television licenses, that made johnson perhaps the wealthiest president in the history of the united states. now, he always had a public story that these licenses had no effect.

ladybird's. communityis a property state so it didn't matter. ladybird's name on as much as the documentation as possible. there is no question. johnson engineered stations, preempted competitors from getting competing stations, and made a fortune on tv and radio media licenses in austin, texas as a result of this relationship at the fcc in the early 1940's. it is really jaw-dropping when you see the nature of that political relationship. this is probably a sensational example. not all of it is this corrupt. but that is certainly part of the story. brian: let me get the page here and read it. page 144, you say that in in bethesda, maryland, phillips found extreme right wing broadcasting irrationally hostile to the president and his programs.

talking about -- donald and another man involved in this, the jfk years. what is the point of this? tom: the fairness doctrine. it turns out that when we went to this political system for allocating spectrum rights in 1927, within a couple of years, the regulators at the commission are renewing licenses, but very carefully noting that propaganda stations will not be allowed. early on, in 1929, in a period, you have left wing stations, to use that political term, with eugene debs who bought a station in new york city. they wanted it for political reasons. they wanted to espouse their opinions. these were immediately dubbed propaganda stations by the regulars. and when they were renewed, they were told to be careful about expressing their opinions. and that was an interesting kind of attack on open and free dialogue by the radio commission that in 1984 became the federal

communications commission. the -- in 19 34 became that in 1934 became the federal communications commission. there was further progress in this direction to keep the opinions quiet during the new deal, when, in fact, newspaper publishers, which were thought to be right wing and anti-new deal, they were told they would face restrictions on owning radio stations. that was within the roosevelt administration to keep voices silent. they have rules that came out. roles that discouraged the radio stations from editorializing. that is just around after world war ii and in the late 90 40's, out comesand

explosive policy that will be mandated to carry issues of controversy, of ventures to the community in which they broadcast and to do so from a balanced perspective. ok now, the question of what is a balanced perspective, what is a controversial issue that needs to be covered. i think the chapter title, "orwell's revenge." i mean, fairness doctrine, doesn't that that wouldsomething be political to define? fast-forward to the 1960's. there was a nuclear test ban treaty. it was somewhat controversial. it passed the senate by a fairly healthy margin in 1960 two, but -- 1962 but there are a lot of conservative,

very conservative radio commentators who are against it, and that was troubling to the kennedy/johnson administration, and there was actually a monitoring program of these radio stations put together in washington to help provide it by the national committee. complaints amending free and equal time. the people who ran his operation said explicitly afterwards that it was done to harass and intimidate the stations are actually espousing this point of view. brian: let me read what you wrote. "as a commerce official said 'our massive strategy was we wanted to use the fairness doctrine to challenge and duress right-wing broadcasters in hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too

expensive to continue.'" where did he say that? tom: in testimony, investigating after the fact. it comes from a wonderful 1975 book by fred friendly, former president of cbs news. the good guys, the bad guys, and the first amendment. it does upset the apple cart in terms of your normal view of partisan politics, perhaps, and maybe then, maybe more now, but there are dirty hands all around the political spectrum. conventionally defined, i am talking about. they use these rules to take out opinions on "the other side." so this actually, the thing that is amazing about the fairness doctrine and this time is that there are actually becomes a case that goes to the supreme court. the redline case. decided in 1969. it comes out with one of these challenges where a journalist on the left, fred cook, wrote a book, "goldwater: extremist on the right." just after the election is over

in november. he is attacked and criticized on a conservative radio station in pennsylvania by the reverend, and ultraconservative. the journalist demands free, equal time. the owner of the station says "i will sell you the same 15 minutes the reverend used for $7.50." that is what he paid. cook says "i want free equal time." that goes to the supreme court. the supreme court finds 8-0, with justice douglas recused, saying the fairness doctrine is ok, and it is just part of this licensing. if you do not do it this way, you will have chaos in the spectrum. and yeah, the government could look at what the public interest is and how the content works in things like the fairness doctrine. that is editorially ok.

if they could show there was any chilling effect on the editorial independence of the radio stations, in this case it was a radio station, same law for tv. if there is any editorial effect,nce of chilling ofn there would be a case chilling effect. it turned up a whole case was a chilling effect because it came out of this monitoring investigation. this came out of a political effort, a campaign, if you will. it was to harass and intimidate these small, low-budget broadcasters that had seemingly extreme views and were on the opposite side of the fence. the supreme court just missed that. a ratherbecame sensational example of regulatory failure when it became exposed i fred friendly's book.

brian: when did the fairness doctrine finish and stop? tom: there were a lot of controversies. in 1985, the federal communications commission, during the ronald reagan years, actually asked the court to overturn the fairness doctrine on first amendment grounds. the court came back to the fcc and they basically said it is your regulation. if you do not like it, do not tell the court to overturn it. you just undo it. what happened in august in 1987 is the federal communications commission overturns the fairness doctrine. they withdraw it and there is a big negative reaction, the idea that that was going to cause problems with fairness. what it did do and what studies have found, and my report on one such study i wrote with a former student of mine, david sosa, published a few years back, did find there was an explosion in informational programming on am and fm radio.

you have news, talk, news-talk, and public affairs format programming all through radio. a lot of people all the looked at that and say that they are conservatives and rush limbaugh and all this rise of conservative talk radio, and there is a link saying the deregulation allowed more vibrant opinions, so to speak. the conservatives in general were against eliminating the fairness doctrine. newt gingrich, james falwell, ardent conservatives were opposed to that reagan era deregulation policy.

they wanted to reinstitute the fairness doctrine. host when there was a fairness doctrine, you and i had to walk somewhere and find the person responsible for dealing with a complaints. where would he or she be? tom: at the media bureau of the federal communications commission -- brian: how many people fussed over the fairness doctrine? tom: i was fussed over for decades. you know, i cannot give you the numbers -- brian: small dozens? tom: i was there in 1991 and 1992 and the chairman of the commission was appointed by the chairman and george h.w. bush. so, you know, the media bureau gets these complaints. the staff goes through them and obviously tries to formulate some kind of policy. consistent over time. again, it is not just the

democratic left in the kennedy johnson years saying conservatives need to be attacked this way. the conservatives in the 1970's filed very big fairness doctrine complaints against major networks are being allegedly too liberal. that was on defense policy issues. brian: you have in your book, on the same section, a lot of politics. you have a memo from herb klein to chuck colson in the nixon years. "for your eyes only, please." memorandum for h.r. haldeman, nixon, they are all involved in this, 1970. the following is a summary of the most pertinent conclusions from my meeting with the three network chief executive spirit one, the networks are terribly nervous over the uncertain state of the law, the recent state decisions and granting congress access to tv. they are also apprehensive about us. why did you put that memo in the book? tom: because of the licensing control that was vested in washington, ostensibly, in an independent regulatory agency,

but de facto, there is political control. and the nixon administration had a very pointed policy to talk to the network chiefs, particularly the presence of the news divisions, at the three network, cbs, nbc, abc and to tell them they were not happy with the reporting, with the content and they would look at regulatory options. they would look at the fairness doctrine enforcement and look at licensing issues and make things difficult for the corporations in the economic sense. so, this happens early on in the nixon administration and chuck colson, the presidential aide who later went to prison in watergate, he is central in talking to the network heads in new york.

and intimidating to this power that the regulator has that is supposed to be independent but implicitly is under the ages of the executive. brian: her client writes "they told me anytime we had a complaint about slanted coverage, to call me." in other words, they are very much afraid of us, and trying hard to prove they are good guys. here is chuck colson around the same issue, december 15, 1972, talking to president nixon on the phone. [begin audio clip] >> good. i was going to ask him. no, i never got a chance. he said, ok, see me. i said i have one thing to talk to you about. cannot see you

tomorrow." he did not want to talk. i am seeing him monday at 1:00. i will just say look, you guys are crazy. you can hire all the executives you want that will not solve the problem. you have to put someone on the air who will give balance to all of the god dam slamming we have been taking from rather and cronkite and others. i will make a real pitch out of it. i am sure that would help us. >> all right, sure. >> that would help us. and also, give the client time and money. >> they have the money. >> they sure as hell do. [end audio clip] brian: what are we hearing? tom: the chilling effect. and that is what is not supposed to happen with the regulatory structure. we have the first amendment in the united states. congress should make no law abridging freedom of speech or

the press. that is an effort to abridge freedom of speech and of the press. fairness doctrine challenges that do involve free, equal time and license renewals that are set aside for hearings. in some cases, denied, potentially. brian: if he was alive today, would he be as afraid? tom: no, it is just the transparency has gotten a bit better, and perhaps, the litigation that you can introduce to the court, i think, is probably more compelling today. if there really were conversations of his nature, that as the court said, if there is a chilling effect, we will not look so kindly on the regulatory structure, so there is a better defense today, and there has been a liberalization. that is the just and part of the -- that is the interesting part

of the story. we get this political spectrum in 1927, and there is a lot of great technology and a lot of free speech, and a lot of market competition that is suppressed, and there are many more stories in the book, a whole section called "silence of the entrants," where fm radio, cable tv -- it is the transparency has gotten a bit better, and perhaps the litigation that you can introduce to the court, i think is probably more compelling today. if there really were conversations of this nature, this as the court said, if there is a chilling effect, we are not going to look so kindly on the regulatory structure. brian: who in this town? again, is there a person that has the most power when it comes to the spectrum? tom: certainly the chair and the

chairs of the committee and sometimes there is an interplay in the white house depending on how engaged the white house is. one of the interesting things about the johnson white house is the president is literally in the white house talking about business deals. nbc.the president of having johnson on stations get better terms for affiliation agreements with cbs. and, at the same time, johnson had people in his administration suggesting that there be better, more market oriented positions and to open up new technology for things like network tv. but he would not go there. he was compromised on the fact that he did not want there to be much focus on this little because he had his own conflict.

atliterally kept that stuff bay. finally, starting in the 1970's there is a tendency to look more favorably on market competition and freedom of speech to the first amendment actors in the market. brian: who was edwin armstrong and why did he commit suicide? tom: a great inventor. a student at columbia university in the early part of the last century and by the time he amaduated he had patents in radio that made him first a professor and as a young man at columbia, a very wealthy investor. for a time he was a leading shareholder in rca. he then, as sort of the zenith of his inventive career in the 1930's came up with a better technology. fm radio.

which was excellent in terms of high fidelity reception. it took them quite a while to get the regulators to give him any help at all because there had to be spectrum allocated for this new technology. of course the existing channels were wedded to am so they poo-poo'd fm. in this days, that was something. the reception and the audience and the technical reception was excellent. so world war ii comes, and it edwin armstrong goes to help the army with radios and becomes a major.

at the end of world war ii the federal communications commission for reasons that are described sensationally in many of the roots the entire fm spectrum allocation. that is an old allocation if you have an old radio receiver. that was fm until 1945 and then it moves. the entire industry is destroyed. it put 88 to 108, where it is today. it turns out that is just disastrous. armstrong bought it with all of his might. armstrong fought it with all of his might, and it broke him. he was also litigating on intellectual property against rca, became very despodent in 1954 with his "baby" being so flummoxed by the system. he was a prominent professor, a famous inventor, committed

suicide in sensational fashion and new york city. brian: how did he do it? tom: he dressed in formal attire and walked out of the apartment. he walked out the window. in new york city. he left a note to his wife, apologizing. years later, she did win significant settlements against rca and other users of the fm radio technology, and she became wealthy. but he was not there to see that, nor was he there to see what happened in the 1960's, when the spectrum regulators finally let fm fully compete with am. in a very short number of years, fm just dominated given its excellent quality, particularly for music. so by the 1970's, you're saying fm stations and fm audiences become dominant and am of course becomes superseded in importance. brian: i want to show the cover of your book, because if people want to delve into this, they have to read about it. there is so much, hard for us to

deal with even in an hour. called "the political spectrum," published by yale. our guest is at clemson university now. i want to know how often you have seen this. this is a hearing in 2016. you have the chairman of the fcc and a member of the fcc at a hearing, greatly disagreeing with one another. tell us the politics of this. ajitis tom wheeler and pye. tom was chairman then, democrat, and pye is chairman now, a republican. they have very strong disagreements over policy. let's watch. [begin video clip] >> there is no accident the regulatory framework we have built is depressing broadband investment. >> we are not seeing a decline in broadband infrastructure investment. you can say it, but it does not make it a fact.

>> facts speak for themselves. i would be happy to cement sworn declarations. >> i would be happy to submit the information that the companies provide under penalty of sec to their investors about their investments. >> what is striking is that ceos with pending mergers will say about the fcc's top priorities. >> i'm talking about at&t and comcast, companies like that. >> who are typically repeat players before an agency that regulates highly. [end video clip] brian: what are we seeing there? tom: that is great. usually it is the other way around, that people in public are collegial. i don't oppose collegiality. you won't see the disagreement be stated. here, you see the disagreement stated. certainly, they were talking

about the effects of title ii net neutrality regulation. these are broadband rules that have come about both for wired and wireless systems, so it certainly does enter into the political spectrum. a very big factor is whether or not these rules tend to suppress investment in the markets, to undergird expansion and higher speeds and better functionality for networks. brian: a little bit into the weeds for the average person. i want to ask you to define -- three things. what is the difference between wireless, wi-fi, and broadband? tom: broadband has to do with the speed at which you are receiving information through electronic communication. so broadband is a very generic term for anything from cable television, the video signals, to what you usually talk about now, data networks that have speeds that we associate with fast enough to be able to do things like stream video and get fast turnaround on website access and things of that

nature. the fcc has its own rules for exactly what speeds, and that changes over time and to adjust those. wireless is spectrum-based technology, and it is curious that we define something by what it is not. wire-less. that has come to us from the days of marconi, from the very beginning. it was magical we could do something that we thought needed a wire without the wire. so wireless is any kind of communication that goes through space without that wire. wi-fi is a type of technology that is very common, very popular.

popular in what we call wireless local area networks. if you subscribe to a broadband service that does data, brings data into your house through the cable company or telephone company, you will quite typically then have a wireless modem that distributes your signal around the house through a standard called wi-fi. so that is a particular type of wireless technology. brian: you say some very positive things about a politician that is no longer alive. he left congress, defeated in 1980. he was the chairman of the communications subcommittee in house. deerlin.n this is not good audio, but i want to show the audience what he sounded like. i want you to tell me how he fits. [begin video clip] >> three years ago, the subcommittee had just completed a hearing on the breakthrough study of cable,

cable promise versus performance. we found out that the regulatory impediment to full cable development has been such that you would have almost been put out of business. i thought then, i still think, that some radical surgery was called for in national communications law, failing that the 1934 act under which we operate, you operate, really anti-dated so much of the technological development, including broadband cable, that some basic changes were necessary. [end video clip] brian: a former anchorman from san diego, chairman of the communications subcommittee. what would you tell us about him? tom: sitting here today, 2017, it is remarkable.

brian: the video is from 1979. tom: he was a remarkable leader. between 1976 and 1979, he was pursuing what he talked about, a reform of the 1934 communications act. he was very frustrated with the fact that the government had blocked competition to television, broadcast television, which was condemned as a vast wasteland in the most famous speech ever given by an american regulator, 1961. newton minow. when cable comes to compete and offer more selection then just abc, cbs, nbc, cable is pushed back and broadcasters protected by regulation. this goes on for years, until the late 1970's period, there

was deregulation. he was fighting for more. the fcc and courts were moving on separate tracks in the same way. lionel van deerlin had a lot more in mind. he wanted to abolish the fairness doctrine and replace that sort of regulation, which was designed to promote public interest programming and public affairs and news and so forth. he said, let's just take a small tax on the value of the licenses and put that in an endowment for public broadcasting. that would take away a lot of the political control over licensees. it would mitigate some of the stuff that came out that we have been talking about during the nixon administration, previously during the kennedy and johnson administrations, undue political influence on broadcasters. he thought very highly of first amendment rights for broadcasters, having been one. he had a very deregulatory program. it was going to constrain at&t, which was a monopoly with all kinds of practices and restraint of trade, as was alleged by the u.s. government and finally broken up in the 1982 consent decree.

he was very forward-looking. he just triggered all kinds of political opposition. the broadcasters hated what he was doing. they were afraid he would open up too much competition with cable. public interest advocates were afraid he was going to do away with regulation they liked. conservatives like barry goldwater fought him. he didn't have any natural allies at the end of the day. he had great ideas, in my opinion, and he has been proven to be ahead of the curve by what has happened since. we have had a deregulation that allowed cable to compete. we have a flowering of hundreds of channels and diversity of content today versus when we had

three networks, doing 15 minutes of news a day. it was not even independent news, it was all the same news, the news from nowhere, and edward epstein's great book talking about how the networks did not have political views. they just had the sort of godly presence. we have competition in cable. that has extended to the net. it is important to see the antecedents of free speech with the technology of today, broadband and internet. we have a laissez-faire position that allows free speech to get out there. that is what the free-speech mandate in the constitution seems to suggest. brian: you mentioned the chairman newt minow of the federal communications commission's in 1961. here he is. 35-years-old.\ this is audio talking about the vast wasteland. i want to ask if anything has changed. [begin video clip] >> when television is bad,

nothing is worse. i invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air. keep your eyes glued to that said until the station signs off. i can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland. you will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western him --and western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. endless commercials, many screaming, cajoling, and offending. most of all, boredom. true, you will see a few things

you will enjoy, but they will be very few, and if you think i exaggerate, i only ask you to try it. [end audio clip] brian: what do you think? tom: it is the most famous speech ever given by u.s. regulator. it is remarkable then and now. the vast wasteland he refers to, which certainly appeals as a description to many of us, was created by regulation. even in the 1940's, before we had the tv allocation table of 1952 finalized, we had four competing networks. the dumont network was crushed by rules of licensing. we suppressed competition to very few voices. it was a product of that system, that structure. the idea we could have more and more competition and better, more quality, not all higher, but more diversity, appealing to people with different tastes, that was just around the corner through cable. cable was an end run on regulation, because we had suppressed voices through over the air broadcast licenses. now there was spectrum being built to give us more choice. that was suppressed by newton's fcc that turned the tables.

-- th himhat we had hima andt we had not actually had a policy until 1952. that started at period where we stopped cable broadcasting from competing through a series of arcane rules. only through the 1970's deregulation did you get c-span, public affairs, cnn, competition between msnbc and fox news and cnbc and al jazeera and vice and bloomberg. now we have a situation where networks come and go, but they can compete and have different views. we have sports, movies, reality tv. people say there is a vast wasteland, but there is a lot of diversity. through over-the-top and expanding to broadband-delivered video programs and wireless, all part of the mix, we are getting

-- it is a golden age of hollywood. i mean, this is really a cornucopia, a bountiful cornucopia. we may not like what some people like. we may not like the taste and preferences of the public, but there is an opportunity for high quality and diverse programming, whether it be c-span or hbo or netflix. brian: how often in the history of communications in the spectrum have incumbent industries, existing industries, blocked expansion in communications? and how often has money influenced politicians to stop something from happening, or for that matter, to get something started, in your opinion? tom: it is -- i mean, it is the modus operandi.

in terms of actual examples, it is the operating day. it is sort of the locus of control has to do with the interests of incumbents and other powerful industries, as well as certain key institutional players. but the public interest, of course, is a fiction. this is the standard for making decisions in the 1927 radio act, public interest, convenience, and necessity. there is no where to look up the public interest. it is a political determination. the voices that are most influential in making that determination are certainly backed by important players. there is normal politics. you go back to the eisenhower administration, newspapers that wanted tv licenses that have endorsed eisenhower. they generally got them. newspapers that endorsed stevenson generally did not.

there is strong evidence of that. that is traditional politics. the much more ubiquitous aspect of politics is the influence of incumbent interests. today, as we sit here, satellite radio, which is popular with about 30 million subscribers, cannot do what is called local news. it can't broadcast local news. you might wonder, that's part of a program that is supposed to advance, literally, the public interest, local news. how did this perverse outcome come to be? the incumbent radio stations, terrestrial broadcasters, are very concerned about local advertising by their competitor in satellite. they have got rules attached to the satellite licenses to prevent satellite from doing locally distributed programming that is not distributed everywhere. you can get on satellite radio,

you can get news and weather reports for miami, but you have to get them -- if you are in seattle, it has to be nationally broadcast, which is very inefficient, takes up space. the satellite, sirius xm, has the ability to actually patch in local programming, but they are by law prohibited. they have to have national program. highly inefficient, anti-consumer, anti-news, and it protects the incumbent. that is what we are trying to get away from, but that is what we still have. brian: how much -- do people that own a radio station or television station today, how much did it cost them for spectrum? tom: tv and radio, the prices are implicit. those licenses -- a footnote for a couple of exceptions -- but those licenses were assigned without competitive bidding.

brian: do they pay a tax now? tom: no. there are very nominal licensing fees for regulatory administrative. in general, that kind of transaction is administrative. brian: we have not got much time. there are billions and billions of dollars being paid to these broadcasters to give up the spectrum. why, who is paying them? tom: the idea of auctioning licenses, not issuing them administratively through agency fiat, was broached in the 1950's, and was very controversial. people said, for technical reasons, you can do it. economists put this idea forward ronald, who thought seriously about how he would organize competition in the market. he ended up getting a nobel prize for some insights that led to. very interesting part of the story. at any rate, in the 1990's, some countries -- not first united

states, but soon after -- we had legislation passed, 1994, auctions are allowed, not for television at first, but for mobile licenses and other services. we have been doing auctions over 20 years, raised about $120 billion for the u.s. treasury. we just had a big auction that took a year. part of that option, it was 2-sided. it actually paid tv stations to hand their licenses back in to the u.s. government to make more room for their spectrum that was allocated to their tv broadcasts, make more spectrum for mobile services.

and so that spectrum has been turned around in this so-called fcc incentive option, with money coming in, about $20 billion bid for the new mobile licenses, and about half going to tv stations paying for about 133 licenses that came back to the fcc and have been taken off the air at about 2000 total fcc licenses. brian: in other words, where the government gave thes frequencies to people years ago for free -- tom: yes. brian: the government is now, or they are being paid millions of -- billions of dollars to give them up? tom: you got it. brian: it is hard to process. tell us how that happened. tom: let me just say. in "the political spectrum," what sounds completely straightforward to somebody who is there and the way i think about it -- in fact, it is a good idea to do this option, relative to some other policies you -- it just sounds kind of crazy. yes, the government distributed these licenses in the public interest, and the government has now determined there is much too much spectrum allocated to over

him him him the air broadcasting, because we made the switch to cable and satellite and broadband. brian: digital. tom: digital technologies all around. yeah, and we have also done digital tv broadcasting. the big switch is we use other media distribution platforms, so why do we have this stuff that is very valuable going to tv? you might think, if you believe that the public interest works the way it is written on paper, that the government just end the license. they don't renew it. they say, we're going to reallocate the spectrum. that is not the way happens. broadcasters say, you can't do that. they are politically influential. so you have to figure out a way to get the broadcasters to cooperate. it turns out, actually paying the broadcasters and allowing the spectrum to be used on higher valued use, is liable to society. given the constraints and

rigidity and inefficiencies of the political spectrum, this is the best way to do it. there are other alternatives i talk about in the book that i think would be even better than the current situation has been structured by regulators, but this is a move in the right direction. brian: are you glad this book is finished and published? how many total years would you say you took to write it? tom: i think -- of course, i am happy to have it published, delighted. my editor and yale university press for helping in that effort. i have spent most of the last four or five years tied up in the book. i hope others think it was time well spent. brian: we are out of time, but what level should you be at to be able to read this and understand it? who did you write for? tom: certainly not for professional economists or engineers.

i'm very glad you asked. anybody who is interested in the way the economy works, washington works, fascinated by wireless technology, and just where we are in terms of this extraordinarily wonderful and disruptive set of opportunities that society has, and understanding how these opportunities came to be, some of the hurdles that have had to be overcome, and some of the barriers still in place, where we could do a lot better if we understood the market better. brian: again, our guest has been thomas hazlett. the book is "the political spectrum: the tumultuous liberation of wireless technology, from herbert hoover to the smartphone." we thank you very much for joining us. tom: thank you, brian. ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ announcer: if you enjoyed this week's "q&a" interview, here are some other programs you might like. tv lobbyists carol and tom wheeler on their experience working on the first barack obama residential campaign in iowa. amc ceo josh sapan about his book. and our 2004 interview with fox news chairman and ceo roger ailes, at their studio in new york city. you can watch these anytime or search our entire video library at c-span.org. announcer: c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you.

live at noon eastern, and a look .t how tax policies a discussion on the roles of climate change. >> tonight to on the atmunicators a look broadband and regulations. with american regulation president matthew colton. >> the cable business is not what it used to be. as a business, it is failing. it is difficult for cable operators to break even on cable which ishe business why broadband is so important, giving consumers more choice that we cannot give them through broadband. >> and tom larson from media,

communications corporation. >> the companies that are taking the risk are being criticized. they are being beat out to be villains. lauded.hers are being the sense they haven't done amazingly innovative things but they make a ton of money off but they make a ton of money off >> this morning ayesha rascoe and "u.s.a. today" correspondent paul singer look at the week washington. later anthony clark offer up the last campaign on the taxpayer's operation of

presidential libraries. as always, we take your calls theyou can join conversation as facebook and twitter. "washington journal" is next. host: good morning it's june 5, 2017. congress returns after last break from the memorial day holiday. begin on the "washington journal" discussing are the reactions from saturday night london.ttacks in president trump began his public twitter and continue tweeting sunday. he offers remarks last night thee he vowed to prevent threat of terror from spreading. onwant to hear your thoughts the president's response, leadership and international role