And they've got to be held accountable; our broadcasting system has to be made accountable; and unless it is, it's going to be very hard to change anything else for the better in this country.

The public gets not one penny from them in return for those airwaves.

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.

Deregulation is a popular term that's used across the political spectrum. And it's one of these terms like "choice," that corporate interests have used because they know their focus-group buzzword testing makes it sound like a popular word. Because, who can be against deregulation? Being free, having liberty, not having someone tell you what to do, being deregulated, hey, that sounds great. But deregulation is a non sequitur in the realm of media policy or media regulation. The issue is never regulation versus deregulation; our entire system is built on media policies and subsidies.

Also, the commercial media in a superior position, really, to any other corporate lobby, because where would people hear about commercial media or corporate media criticism, where would they hear criticism of them other than in the commercial media?

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.

And they've got to be held accountable; our broadcasting system has to be made accountable; and unless it is, it's going to be very hard to change anything else for the better in this country.