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Lawmakers have good reason to want a healthy broadcast industry. Broadcast TV stations provide more than 186,000 jobs on an annual basis, which directly generate more than $30 billion in economic activity.

Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

History shows that pay-TV subscribers flee in droves to alternative providers when there is even a rare service disruption - demonstrating a quantifiable value for 'must-have' broadcast programming.

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?

Programmers have been wandering out and shooting a shotgun into the night sky and hoping they hit something, and I end up paying $150 for channels full of nothing I want to watch.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

There are literally tens of thousands of very good content providers in the world that don't distribute their content through TV channels.

Which is supposed to mean they're doing something in their broadcasting they would not do is they were simply out to maximize profit; if they were really public service institutions, not purely profit maximizing institutions.

When you're still in the broadcast business, you're still trying to reach tens of millions. You're trying to still aim for a broader audience, and I think that's a more difficult task to spread yourself across that audience, connect with them, as opposed to a very, very small, pinpointed audience. Difficult to do.

I don't think people realize the extent to which TV networks are hurt when they carry public broadcasting. I think the estimate is that they lose a half-million dollars for a half day's programming.