But having said that, there's also a sea change in attitude towards media.

An informed public democracy means rule of the people. A media system is absolutely essential to that process, if people are going to be political equals, they to have to have the information and tools so they can actually be participants. That's liberal democracy 101.

What I've found is that there is a tremendous interest in these issues, across the political spectrum, sort of left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly.

If you go to go to countries in Europe or Asia or even Canada, even with all the Internet and cable TV and satellite, public systems tend to be the most popular stations in the countries. In some countries like Norway and Germany, public stations are, if anything, more popular than ever as people see what Rupert Murdoch's got in store for them in the commercial stations.

The whole process of getting licenses to broadcast, which took place decades ago, was done behind closed doors by powerful lobbies, and wealthy commercial interests got all the licenses with no public input, no congressional input for that matter.

When the government allocates monopoly rights to frequency, and there are only a handful in each community, it's picking the winners in the competition.

The current public television and radio system in the United States, while it's better than nothing, that's about the best you can say about it. It's nowhere near the standard it needs to be for our society, and we've got to make a commitment to rethink the system altogether. You know, just giving more money to what exists on PBS now would be not great; we've got to have a new vision of PBS.