Copps: Airwaves Belong to All of Us
“When it comes to the fate of the people’s airwaves — your airwaves — no voices should be as important as yours,” writes FCC Commissioner Michael Copps in an op-ed in today’s St. Petersburg Times.
Copps — an outspoken opponent of media consolidation — will join the four other FCC commissioners in Tampa, Fla., for the fourth official FCC hearing on media ownership. Urging Florida residents to come testify about the local impact of consolidation, Copps stressed the need for “more than an inside-the-Beltway discussion.”
“We need your input and the input of as many of our fellow citizens as we can elicit,” he writes. “I believe we have the best chance in our generation to settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes. But it will take a lot of us, working together, to make it happen.”
As a St. Petersburg-area high school graduate, Copps recalls a “vibrant media” with “locally originated programs, hometown talent, and good coverage of public issues and political campaigns.” He returns to Tampa on April 30 to “measure how much of that vibrancy remains.”
A broad coalition of national and local groups is urging the public to attend the hearing and tell the FCC how well their media has served — or failed to serve — their communities. To help local residents prepare their testimony and learn more about media issues, the groups have sponsored a series of training workshops.
“We need to know whether the good folks of the town where I once lived feel they are being well-served by the media,” writes Commissioner Copps.
If you are in the Tampa Bay area, come out on April 30 and make your voice heard.
I have a few words of advice to anyone wanting to testify.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:10 pm1. Arrive EARLY.
I testified at the hearing in Harrisburg, PA. They let you have your 2 minutes in the order that you sign up. I arrived at 10 a.m., an hour after it began, so I was number 105. I was one of the last people to testify, at about 3:30 p.m., after all the cameras and coverage was over. Unfortunately, the first 80 or so people to testify were all either from the local TV stations, or the charities they help. All they talked about was all the charity work they did, and the charities all talked about how grateful they were for the help they received doing their charity work. In other words, they pretty much hijacked the agenda. There was no mention of media consolidation, just charity work.
2. Prepare a two minute speech and practice it before you get there.
I ad-libbed and it didn’t work out so well for me.