The Benton Foundation has been chosen to serve as the home of the Advisory Committee legacy, acting as the institutional memory and tracking the debate on and progress of the Advisory Committee's report and recommendations. The work of the Advisory Committee is just one step in the greatest transformation in television's history.

As the PIAC report states, "It is important to help affirmatively shape the new digital television era, in concert with market forces and the technology itself, by recommending appropriate legal obligations and marketplace rules."

Benton's PIAC Legacy Project will be the online home for the recommendations of the Advisory Committee as well as a convenient nexus for tracking reaction to the proposals, implementation by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, and private efforts to realize the Committee's goals.

Our efforts will ensure that interested parties and the public have information available about public hearings and rulemakings on the recommendations, as well as make the Committee's documents widely available and offer a home for a full range of commentary and debate on the recommendations. To this end, Benton will:

• Be the online home of the Committee's recommendations, supporting documents, meeting transcripts and summaries;
• Develop and disseminate policy options that critique and expand on the recommendations of the Gore Committee, and that will educate and facilitate an informed public discussion between policy makers and stakeholders;
• Organize briefings with key Congressional and Executive Branch officials to educate them on the importance of strong public interest obligations in the new digital environment and to discuss the recommendations of the Gore Committee and the policy options for robust interpretation and implementation;
• Help coordinate Committee members’ participation in public hearings at Congress and the FCC;
• Organize and coordinate the participation of nonprofit organizations in hearings, rulemakings, and the like before the FCC, the Congress, and the Executive branch;
• Provide media kits to journalists covering the transition to digital TV, and do other outreach to the press.

For those who are new to the subject of digital television, there are two online sources here to introduce you to what the service is:

• The Origins and Future Prospects of Digital Television Section I of the Committee's report
• Picture This: Digital TV and the Future of Television, a publication of the Benton Foundation

The Advisory Committee also provides a history of the public interest standard:

• The Public Interest Standard in Television Broadcasting

We welcome your comments. Send email to kevint@benton.org and indicate whether or not you'd like your message posted on our website. Please visit often to follow the implementation of the recommendations.