Ed Markey: “Mr. Speaker, let me begin this debate by clarifying for anyone who may be listening what we are fighting about. In the…”

“Mr. Speaker, let me begin this debate by clarifying for anyone who may be listening what we are fighting about. In the United States, we have two types of television stations. We have commercial television stations. On commercial television stations people see the evening news, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Survivor, a whole host of programs which are basically commercial. Now, it is possible, and frequently it occurs, that individual religions purchase commercial TV stations because they want to use them as the vehicle by which they are able to communicate their message into a community. Those are commercial television stations. Then we have the other kind of television stations, public TV stations. Most often we consider them to be PBS. We turn to them, we actually consider them just to have a number, in Boston it is channel 2, WGBH; and we have another smaller public television station as well. Those television stations are meant to serve the noncommercial, educational needs for the entire community. This is a debate over one of those noncommercial, educational television stations.”