Frank Pallone: “One of the proposals that has been laid out is with regard to premier time for political ads. The gentlewoman is in…”

“One of the proposals that has been laid out is with regard to premier time for political ads. The gentlewoman is in Connecticut and I am in New Jersey, so we are both in the New York metropolitan area. Members who live in the New York metropolitan area know how expensive the radio and TV market is for New York. If one is in New Jersey and one is running statewide for Senate, for example, one has to contend with not only New York, but Philadelphia; in both cases very expensive markets for TV time. So I think that when the President recently suggested linking free broadcast time to the stations' interest in some of the spectrum, or I guess it is this digital high definition television, these licenses that are now being put forth, I thought that was particularly interesting. There was an article in the New York Times on March 13, just a few days ago, and if I could just bring out a couple of points in that. It said, ``Supporters of free political ads have proposed a national political time bank into which every radio and TV station would deposit one or two hours of prime advertising time for each two-year political cycle.''”