Hon. Michael G. Oxley: “let us review a little bit of history. Back in December of last year, late December, between Christmas and New Year's…”

“let us review a little bit of history. Back in December of last year, late December, between Christmas and New Year's, the FCC determined, in a rather ordinary license swap that goes on virtually every day, in this case a Pittsburgh license swap where the religious broadcasting was changing from a commercial to a noncommercial broadcasting license, the FCC determined at that date, when Congress was not in session, under what would be considered to be an ordinary license swap that the FCC would determine what would be educational, and they would determine whether, in fact, that particular broadcaster was broadcasting enough of what they would consider to be educational programming in nature. This was essentially a determination by the FCC what was educational or what was not, for the first time basically setting up the Government as the arbiter of what was to be considered educational broadcasting. It was a brazen attempt to force traditional religious programming off noncommercial channels. At that point, working with the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Pickering), the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Largent), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns), we all immediately wrote a letter to the FCC and then later introduced a bill, as soon as Congress returned, which overturned that directive. Religious viewers and listeners flooded Capitol Hill.…”