Broadcasting Is A Privilege

To the frustration of neighborhood residents, the Deutsche Bank fire a few weeks ago illustrated NYC’s continued lack of preparedness for neighborhood emergencies. One might assume that would have significantly improved since September 11, 2001. Nevertheless, the telecommunications industry (cell phone companies included) are impeding the city’s efforts to install emergency notification systems. On WNYC’s “All Things Considered” yesterday, host Amy Eddings speaks with the station’s own Bob Hennelly on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s handling of the way it dismantles the contaminated former Deutsche Bank building. Near the end Hennelly addresses telecommunication companies’ failure to improve the quality of emergency communication strategy. He credits the Bloomberg administration for implementing email notifications to Lower Manhattan, a move that won’t be of much help to those without computers or Internet access. Surprisingly, Hennelly, as a broadcaster himself, calls broadcasting a “privilege” granted to them by the people and that the government needs to step in when these companies fail to adequately provide this public service. That exchange is transcribed below:

Bob Hennelly: Well, to give this administration credit, they have online, they’re in the process now of trying to come up with some things like, they’re going to have email notification for—by the middle of October, for Lower Manhattan people of what goes on. [They’re] also looking at reverse-911. But the irony is that post-9/11, in our industry-friendly country, the telecommunication companies haven’t had to ante-up in terms of spending the money and making the investments so that cell phones don’t collapse whenever we really need them.

Amy Eddings: And I understand the Bloomberg administration is lobbying the FCC to make the telecom industry…

Bob Hennelly: Flex their muscles! It is a public service. And after all they are licensed and it’s a privilege, so they should have to provide their part of what’s required.

Listen to the entire segment.