If the commission ruled that home-shopping stations fulfill the public-interest obligations of broadcasters, he continued, "it will have failed to comply with its statutory mandate."

Under Federal law, broadcast stations get their licenses free from the Government, in return for meeting certain largely unspecified public-interest obligations.

Reed E. Hundt, the commission's chairman, thinks this is a minimal public-interest obligation, but the other four F.C.C. commissioners aren't sure they agree.

But he has made a crusade of pressing broadcasters to uphold their public-interest obligations, especially in children's programming.

They insist that the public-interest obligations are what they decide they are.

In a related action, Mr. Clinton plans to appoint 12 to 15 people this month to a panel to weigh broadcasters' public-interest obligations.

But to meet the opponents' concerns, the commission stipulated today that broadcasters would have to meet certain public-interest obligations in exchange for the second channels.

"We can either abandon the public-interest standard altogether or we can say that there are specific public-interest obligations."

He called the doctrine "an essential element of a broadcaster's basic public-interest obligation to the community."

It figures also in the feeble agenda recently put forward by a Presidential advisory committee on the public-interest obligations of the television industry.