So the competition isn't once you got the license, running the station; it's getting the license.

Our existing media system today is the direct result of government laws and subsidies that created it.

The commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they're extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.

Even if someone wanted a purely free-market, competitive media system, it would require extensive government regulation to set up those markets. All our largest media companies are based on the grant of explicit government monopoly privileges and licenses, or franchises, or subsidies. The government didn't come in after the system was in place, it built the system in the first place.

When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn't setting the terms of the competition.

The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers ... is absurd.

If you look at the history of broadcasting, what you find is the National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association whose mission is to protect the interests of the commercial broadcasters.