Word: fcc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After holding American Telephone & Telegraph on the line for 20 months, during which 66 witnesses filled 10,000 pages with testimony, the Federal Communications Commission last week had a message for the company: Mother Bell was making too much money. The FCC held that A.T. & T. should put less of its profit back into the business, instead use the money to reduce its customers' telephone bills. Specifically, the FCC wanted reduction of charges on long-distance and international telephone service by $120 million a year, an average...
According to FCC calculations, the company was enjoying more than an 8.5% return on investment, too rich a feast for a public utility. A more reasonable income, said the commission, would be 7% to 7.5%. To A.T. & T.'s insistence that 8% was needed, the FCC replied: "We note from the record that no regulatory agency has ever, in a formal proceeding, approved a rate of return at or even approximating this level for any electric or telephone utility...
...about the edict, but warned that "if allowed to stand for the long pull, this restriction on our earnings prospects would inevitably slow down our efforts to provide more and better communications service to the public." Left unsaid was whether the company planned to appeal the decision. Under the FCC order, reductions on interstate and international calls will go into effect...
...commission's ruling came as still another blow to A.T. & T. stock, which, with some 3,100,000 owners, is the most widely held in the world. It reached an alltime high of $75 in July 1964, then began falling, and was further depressed by the FCC investigation. Last week A.T. & T. slumped to a 1967 low of $53.25. The loss in value of the stock since the 1964 high: $10.5 billion. Nor is the FCC quite finished with the subject of A.T. & T. In the fall, the commission will launch a new phase of its far-ranging investigation...
Additional hearings failed to change a single FCC member's mind. Last week, splitting along the same 4-to-3 lines as it had before, the commission reaffirmed its approval of the ITT-ABC get-together. In so doing, the FCC rejected the Antitrust Division's contentions that the merger might (1) restrain competition, (2) subject ABC's public affairs programming to unusual pressures from ITT's far-flung business interests, and (3) enable ITT to drain the network of capital that otherwise might go into broadcasting. Such fears, concluded the commission majority, "are too speculative...