IS CHANNEL 17 STARTING DOWN A PATH OF ... POLITICAL POT HOLES?

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How long will it be before the John Hodge re-election video of "How great I am" ... Shows up on Channel 17?

U.S. Broadcasting Regulatory Rule

It is the closest thing in broadcast content regulation to the "golden rule." The equal time, or more accurately, the equal opportunity provision of the Communications Act requires radio and television stations and cable systems which originate their own programming to treat legally qualified political candidates equally when it comes to selling or giving away air time. Simply put, a station which sells or gives one minute to Candidate A must sell or give the same amount of time with the same audience potential to all other candidates for the particular office. However, a candidate who can not afford time does not receive free time unless his or her opponent is also given free time. Thus, even with the equal time law, a well funded campaign has a significant advantage in terms of broadcast exposure for the candidate.

To really understand the debate, it's important to understand what the Fairness Doctrine is and what it is not.  We've seen many politicians referring to the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule in the same sentence, as if they are part and parcel of the same thing. In fact, they are different issues.  Essentially, the Fairness Doctrine simply required that stations provide balanced coverage of controversial issues of public importance.  The Fairness Doctrine never required "equal time" in the sense of strict equality for each side of an issue on a minute for minute basis.  In talk programs and news coverage, a station just had to make sure that both points of view were presented in such a way that the listener would get exposure to them.  How that was done was in a station's discretion, and the FCC intervened in only the most egregious cases.

The application of the Fairness Doctrine was never limited to simply news and talk programming - but it also intruded into the commercial sphere.  In the case of advertising about controversial issues, where parties in favor of an issue bought time to push their views, and the opponents could not afford to buy time to respond, the station might actually have to give the opponents time - but it was usually only a third or a quarter as much time as the proponents had bought, not strict equality.   And the station could choose which opponents to give the time to - the viewpoint, not the spokesperson was what counted.

The application of the Doctrine in the context of advertising could have profound effects.  For instance, the use of the Fairness Doctrine as a weapon against smoking advertising - requiring that stations give anti-smoking advocates time to talk about the ill health affects of smoking in a ratio of 1/3 or 1/4 of the advertisements that ran for cigarettes - was one of the reasons that the constitutionality of the legislative ban on smoking ads enacted in 1970 was never challenged by the tobacco companies. 

While enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine was declared unconstitutional by the FCC in the late 1980s, the "equal time" rule is still very much alive - as it stems from a different source in the Communications Act - the Section 315 provisions on the political rules dealing with the treatment by broadcast stations of candidates for public office. Essentially, equal time requires that, if a broadcast station gives one candidate free time, all other candidates can get the same amount of free time. If a candidate buys time on a station, the station must be willing to sell each candidate equal amounts of time. In connection with candidate time, it is strict minute for minute equality - unlike what was once required by the Fairness Doctrine.  See our Political Broadcasting Guide for details of the application of the equal time or "equal opportunities" rule.