Growing up in Milwaukee, I remember a city with a vibrant media: locally originated programs, hometown talent, good coverage of public issues and political campaigns and competing newspapers with wildly different editorial bents.

This week, I'm back in town, trying to measure how much of that vibrancy remains and how well the media has used the admittedly more numerous outlets it now has to foster these same kinds of traits.

It's important to me because I serve as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, and the FCC will soon be deciding whether to allow fewer media giants to buy up still more local broadcasters and other media outlets. We will be discussing all this at a town hall meeting Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Three years ago, a majority at the FCC voted — over my objection — to scrap many of the ownership limits we had and instead to allow a single corporation to dominate local TV and radio markets by merging the community's TV stations, radio stations, newspaper and other outlets. A storm of public outrage ensued.

Three million citizens contacted the FCC to express their opposition. I didn't know that 3 million people knew there was an FCC! But they wrote us out of a strong belief that we desperately need rules to prevent one-size-fits-all news from becoming the acceptable standard in our communities. Congress went on record with its concerns, too. And then a federal court found the rules both substantively and procedurally flawed and sent them back to us to rework.

A few weeks ago, the FCC launched a review that might severely scale back the remaining media consolidation protections that exist today. These rules, among other things, limit a single corporation from dominating local TV and radio markets or from merging a community's TV stations, radio stations and newspapers.

So a new dialogue is underway. But this time, it needs to be much more than an inside-the-Beltway discussion between a government agency and a few mega-corporations.

Let's remember that American citizens own the airwaves, not TV and radio executives. We give broadcasters the right to use these airwaves for free. They earn profits using this public resource in exchange for their agreement to broadcast in the public interest.

What we need to know is whether the good folks of my hometown feel they are being well-served by the media served up to them. Are they getting the diversity of viewpoint they deserve? Are minority communities and diversity issues being covered? Local talent? Community issues?

In this election season, are stations covering the important issues that confront us or do they just focus on the polls and run profitable campaign ads? What do Milwaukee's citizens get in return for granting TV and radio stations free use of the airwaves? We need to tap your local expertise to get a look both broad and deep at what is happening here.

Even if the future of our media is not your No. 1 issue, it needs to be — it has to be — your No. 2 issue. That's because Americans get their input and develop their views about all the other critical issues of the day: the economy, jobs, peace and war, health care, education, etc. — from the media. They learn about them on the TV news, hear about them on the radio, read about them in the newspaper. I can't think of any of these issues that wouldn't fare much better in an open, diverse, community-responsive and competitive environment.

I urge you to attend the town meeting. We need your input and the input of as many of our fellow citizens as we can elicit. We have an opportunity in the months ahead to make sure that the public's airwaves serve the public's interest.

After traveling the length and breadth of this country, I believe we have the best chance in our generation to settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes and to resolve it in favor of airwaves of, by and for the people of this great country.

Michael J. Copps is a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. The town hall meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at UWM's Helen Bader Concert Hall.