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[Commentary] The use of public airwaves has always come with public obligations. But nobody seems to be asking what the people are getting back in the deal. Whatever happened to “enlightenment of all the people”? Imagine if instead of cashing out, these station owners invested a significant portion of the auction revenue in a public fund to confront the crisis in journalism and support responsive local news, serious investigative reporting and public and community media of all kinds. What if they used the money to set up cutting-edge investigative newsrooms in cities across the country? Or built new tools to help the public sort through data and public records? Or leveraged it to support community-engagement efforts to attract and grow new and diverse audiences? What if we saw the auction as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent public media and safeguard journalism’s future?

That’s how we see it at Free Press, and that’s why we’ve launched a new campaign — starting in New Jersey — to build the public pressure and political will needed to redirect and reinvest some of the spectrum-auction money to meet community-information needs.

[Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund. ]

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States promises sweeping change in Washington (DC), and members of the public broadcasting community are naturally asking what that may mean for us. Let’s start with what hasn’t changed.

Three powerful congressional chairmen who support public broadcasting will continue in their key roles in both the House and Senate. Sen Thad Cochran (R-MI), a champion of public broadcasting since his father served as chairman of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Commission in the 1960s, continues as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sen Roy Blunt (R-MO), who has helped us secure funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ready To Learn and our updated interconnection system, continues as chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, which oversees funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Rep Tom Cole (R-OK), who accepted the America’s Public Television Stations’ Champion of Public Broadcasting award at the Public Media Summit earlier in 2016 and has been an effective advocate for our federal funding, continues to lead the House Appropriations subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education. In addition, the Republican majorities in Congress will retain the same leaders.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Board of Directors unanimously approved a resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission to avoid allowing “white areas” that would lack public television coverage after the upcoming spectrum auction and channel repacking.

Vinnie Curren, CPB’s chief operating officer, told the CPB Board that it has identified “half a dozen major communities” where auctions could occur and where the pubTV station “is operated by an institution whose primary mission was not public broadcasting,” such as a university or government agency. CPB has a “particular concern,” Curren said, that those communities may be at risk of losing an over-the-air public television signal completely. Curren did not identify the stations.

The resolution states that CPB, “as the steward of the federal appropriation, urges the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules and practices with regard to its spectrum incentive auction and repacking process to ensure that no white areas be created and that universal access to free over the air public television service be preserved.”

CPB President Pat Harrison said she and PBS President Paula Kerger have requested one-on-one meetings with FCC Chairman Wheeler to express CPB’s viewpoint, though Wheeler has said he is not taking individual meetings, Harrison said. Representatives from CPB, PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations are also hoping to meet with commissioners, said Michael Levy, CPB’s executive vice president.