Stations must be involved in broadband future, Liroff says

"If we were starting out today as public service media," said David Liroff, "universal broadband would be our distribution method of choice." Liroff, former CPB sr. v.p. and longtime pubmedia analyst, opened this week's NETA conference Jan. 13 in Tampa with his keynote speech. He discussed how universal broadband will affect pubmedia for better and worse, and what role the industry should play during development of the nationwide high-speed network. It's absolutely necessary for stations to get involved at the state level during planning for increased broadband access, he contends, because pubmedia "needs to ensure that the public interest is served" in broadband decisions. "There are elephants on the field; the telecom companies are driving innovation." An archive of several of Liroff's previous speeches may be found here.