The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 2 : Broadcast Spectrum Taxes to Subsidize Public Media

This essay will discuss proposals to impose a tax on broadcast spectrum licenses to funnel money to public media projects or other “public interest” content or objectives.2 Such a tax would be fundamentally unfair to broadcasters, who are struggling for their very survival in the midst of unprecedented marketplace turmoil. Moreover, such a tax is unnecessary in light of the many other sources of “public interest” programming available today. Finally, even if the government creates or subsidizes wonderful, civic- and culturally-enriching content, there’s no way to force people to consume it. Nor should government force such media choices upon the public. There’s no good reason for government to be socially-engineering media choices through taxes