Gordon H. Smith Quotes

The perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.

In the US, commercial interests stole the airwaves early on, before public broadcasters could get a stab at it. And the deal that was made with public broadcasting was, "Okay, we'll allow there to be a handful of public stations to do the educational programming that commercial broadcasters don't want to do, but the deal is they can't do anything that can generate an audience, anything that's commercially viable." Anything they do that could be commercially viable could be considered unfair competition to commercial interests and should only be on the commercial stations.

The important thing to remember with the Internet is that there are large companies that have an interest in controlling how information flows in it. They're very effective at lobbying Congress, and that pattern has locked down other communication media in the past. And it will happen again unless we do something about it.

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.

Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

Isn't it only appropriate that, in return for the free use of the public spectrum, broadcasters provide something substantial, something that wouldn't otherwise be provided by marketplace competition?

Although I believe the Web has greatly increased the distribution of quality news, I do worry about those who don't have Internet access.

I don't think the BBC supporting digital switchover is top slicing. Top slicing is putting the license fee up for grabs for other broadcasters to bid for.

This is the first time in my 32 years in public broadcasting that PBS has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons.

I'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science; help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.

All I can do is advocate changes at the BBC while respecting editorial independence upon which the success of the BBC rests. I can't do anything that requires the BBC to pay certain people certain amounts.

There was a time when the FCC tried to require a certain amount of television and media to be educational, a certain amount to be newsworthy and a certain amount of it to be public access.

We can continue to have a policy in which the public interest means whatever they [broadcasters and communications companies] want it to mean in order to make money. Or we can give it real meaning.

I have tried to help build a framework that recaptures the First Amendment as a principle to empower all Americans, politically and personally, through access to plentiful, diverse communications spaces.

The FCC sided with the public and adopted extremely strong net neutrality rules that should be a global model for Internet freedom.

Internet users should be able to choose where to go online and which applications to use. Comcast, say, shouldn't be allowed to block Skype just because it could siphon the communications giant's telephone business.

We need a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, not vested interests in making citizens pay for formerly free services or restrictions to their capacity to share information.

I don't have any quarrel with the BBC.

The cable law. Prasar Bharati. The Broadcasting Bill. These are all overlapping things.

It would be helpful if broadcasters were willing to be a bit patriotic.

The FCC, under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment.

People pay their licence fee in this country because people believe that we should have public service broadcast programming. Of course, there are lots of different ways you could do that.

As we're unleashing the benefits of communications technologies, we also want to minimize the downsides.

The big difference in those days was that in England the Government subsidized TV, in America we work on TV so we can subsidize the Government.

In today's world, access to the Internet is inarguably critical to function in informal and formal spaces - and the costs to digital segregation are rising.