IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/buspol/v2y2000i2n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Digital Television and the Quid Pro Quo

Author

Listed:
  • Hazlett Thomas W.

    (American Enterprise Institute)

  • Spitzer Matthew L.

    (Caltech and University of Southern California)

Abstract

The recent zero-priced award of $11-70 billion in digital TV (DTV) licenses by the federal government occurred when auctions had been initiated for non-broadcast licenses and when the seven decade-old regime of 'public trusteeship' in broadcasting had become famous for licensee reneging on promised obligations. Policymakers nonetheless declined to auction DTV licenses when enacting the Telecommunications Act of 1996, rejecting a plea from the Senate Majority Leader. This paper provides an overview of the episode and investigates three basic questions. (1) Why does Congress continue a regulatory system that routinely fails to provide the benefits it is supposed to generate? (2) Why did the National Association of Broadcasters propose high definition television as a way of keeping land mobile operators off an unused spectrum? (3) Why did Congress delegate to the FCC the decision to award licenses for digital television broadcasting?

Suggested Citation

  • Hazlett Thomas W. & Spitzer Matthew L., 2000. "Digital Television and the Quid Pro Quo," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-46, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:buspol:v:2:y:2000:i:2:n:2
    DOI: 10.2202/1469-3569.1006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1469-3569.1006
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1469-3569.1006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas W. Hazlett & David Porter & Vernon Smith, 2011. "Radio Spectrum and the Disruptive Clarity of Ronald Coase," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(S4), pages 125-165.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:buspol:v:2:y:2000:i:2:n:2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.