Free Time for Candidates
MAP’s President serves on the advisory committee to the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition. The Coalition, headed by former Washington Post writer Paul Taylor, was organized for the purpose of convincing the TV networks to give free time to Presidential candidates during this past election season. The largest cost for most campaigns is TV airtime, and the coalition believes that without this cost, candidates will be freed from sound-bite and attack ad campaigns, and freed from the influence of special interest contributors.
In the summer before the 1996 elections, several networks did come forward with proposals to provide some amounts of time to presidential candidates, and MAP’s president was invited to speak at a special FCC hearing held to evaluate these proposals. (View the “Comments”/mediaaccess/programs/civicdisc/freetime.htm from that hearing.) While the Coalition did not accomplish its core goal of having the Presidential candidates appear, one after the other, on the night before the election, it has raised the profile of this issue, and one network did give substantial amounts of free time to the candidates. MAP has continued to advise the Coalition on FCC matters and the ongoing debate on digital television.
Additional Resources on Free Time
- Comments of MAP’s President Andrew Jay Schwartzman on broadcaster’s proposals to provide free time in the 1996 presidential campaign. (Summary of those comments.)
- Letter by Free TV for Straight Talk coalition requesting hearing to evaluate proposals.
- Proposal and request for waiver by Fox Network.