Now, the one thing that's clear is that we need nonprofit, noncommercial media - not just broadcasting - more than ever in the United States. We don't need a purely nonprofit, noncommercial system, but we need a significant nonprofit, noncommercial system. Advertising-run media, profit-driven media, simply is not acceptable as the entirety of our media system. There's no defense for it.

In many respects, we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena. In our society, corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that assumed to have been enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times.

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.

One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials.

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.

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.

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?