House Commerce Committee plans oversight hearing on public broadc...

and it would provide opportunity for new members to learn about public broadcasting issues, including funding concerns. Specific issues that will be looked at, Bloss-Baum told us, include charges of bias in NPR reporting, use of PTV’s ancillary and supplementary digital services for commercial purposes, and commercial nature of underwriting practices. Committee will be “watching” funding levels for public broadcasting, she said. Congress was unlikely to legislate major spectrum reform bill or create trust fund this year, said Colin Crowell, counsel to House Telecom Subcommittee ranking Democrat Markey (Mass.). He said Markey had introduced spectrum bill so he could reintroduce re-calibrated bill with suggestions for additions and deletions that would emerge this year. It was important that Congress look again at govt. to extent that “we can get the government, public agencies and the Pentagon to be more efficient with spectrum,” Crowell said. Underlying goal, he said, is to reorient spectrum policy and take it out of budgetary context. That would ensure that policy is put first and “auction is just a corollary benefit that we get from good spectrum policy.” Congress, he said, has done just reverse in recent years and looked at FCC as bank.